


a world full of light, & you (always you)

by unicyclehippo



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, accidental marriage fic, and bam rao is like yooooo my fave slash only existing daughter i wish u much happiness, and kara & lena accidentally complete all of them, basically there are seven courtship steps in a kryptonian marriage, congrats on ur marriage, little bit of angst i guess, lots of fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-17
Updated: 2017-07-02
Packaged: 2018-11-15 05:05:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 23,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11223915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unicyclehippo/pseuds/unicyclehippo
Summary: accidental marriage fic - kara and lena work their way through the seven courtship steps of a kryptonian marriage...without realising it.





	1. Chapter 1

They say that _R_ _ao_ created the suns and stars and planets to keep him company, that he loved his creations for their beauty and order so much that he made Krypton, and its people, to delight in it with him. They said—they _said_ —he was so pleased with his children that he gave to them everything he had: wisdom, and passion, and strength, and intelligence, and within all of these gifts, his love.

She knows _R_ _ao_ made order. A delicate, incredible dance. That _R_ _ao_ set the rules of it all and made the music and the room to dance in, and the costumes, and the decorations, and the love and rhythm of their _heartbeats—all_ of that, everything that exists, and somehow he couldn’t account for his tiny children running amok. Couldn’t account for them making up their own rules, or for their countless missteps.

There was a stretch of time—a considerable stretch indeed—when Kara hated him. Because if _R_ _ao_ had brought order to the universe, he missed a step. Didn’t look far enough ahead to consider the end of his jewel, his love, his Krypton.

Kara read a lot when she came to Earth, about religions and gods, both the divine and the fallible, but mostly she read about people. She was only thirteen when Krypton—when it happened—but she remembers the quick thrum of her mothers pulse, fearful, and the way her father smiled at her with so much love in his eyes it burned, like he knew it was the last thing he would ever get to do and he wanted it to leave some kind of mark. Well, it was, and it did. And she thinks a lot about choice and self and people and how it might have been easier for her if she hadn’t seen them _right there_. Right next to her. How it still felt cruel to have seen them, and to have been made to leave them.

And the what ifs, that loud, endless wave of what ifs: what if one of them had gone with baby Kal, what if they had made those stupid, _stupid_ pods with room for two, what if her mother had never sent Astra to the phantom zone, if Non had never killed a guard, if Kara had never called Astra home, if someone had spoken up sooner, louder, more insistently, if her mother had just agreed to _try_ , if generations ago the House of El had never even been formed—and everything stacks up on everything that came before and Kara gets lost in it.

But there’s no point. There’s no point, because Krypton is dead and left far behind, and that’s where it will stay.

All that remains of Krypton is a fortress of toy relics, a man with her blood but the heart of a human, and shards of her dead planet. And her, still her. And there is no point in hating a god who died with the rest of her world.

//

Years later, standing on the roof of national city’s tallest building—which isn’t CatCo, as much as Cat might like to think it is—she hates him again.

The rain is so cold even she is shivering. Head tilted up to the sky, she doesn’t both wiping away the torrent drenching her face, her hair. Her cape drags heavy on her shoulders, a sopping weight, and she whips it to the side when it tangles around her ankle. The move flicks water off it like a spray of diamonds, shattering against the concrete where the rest of the water, the rest of the _world_ , trembles at her step. She paces the roof of the building, eyes fixed on some distant point, the heart of the storm.

There comes a sound that only she can hear, and she pauses at the corner of the building. Poised there, lightning cracks and illuminates her against the backdrop of a broiling, immense storm. It cloaks the whole city in shadow, clings to everything with its misted tendrils, and she is no exception. She would be engulfed in it, but for the power gathered behind her eyes—white-hot and furious.

And when the thunder drums again, like a call to war, Kara’s edges are sharp enough to be a war all by herself.

Lightning cracks the sky wide open. Thunder follows it instantly in a boom. The wind that comes tearing flings back Kara’s hair, her cape, shudders against the windows stories far below her feet.

Kara clenches her jaw, braces herself against it. Her eyes flash hotter.

She saw Diana catch lightning in her hands once, knows better than most that many things in the world are more than they are given credit for. This storm is more than crashing particles—this is her challenge, her fight, and by everything that exists in this world, _R_ _ao will_ hear her!

“DUAHZ VOIEHD KRYPTAHNIUM,” she yells up to the clouds.

The thunder rolls. Grumbles, shatters into itself.

“TA-RRIV RRAOP-RAO RAOGRYHS PAHDH IRSTUN OSH KHAP!”

She gets no answer save the lightning that zips down toward her and Kara’s eyes flash again. She grits her teeth around a scream and launches herself right at it, catches it on the bands Diana gifted her and doesn’t stop, punches right up through the clouds to the heart of the storm. She winds the lightning around her, grips it tight.

“ _Ra_ _o_ ,” she yells, voice dragged raw.

The wind is stronger here and it whips her hair across her face, stinging, and everything tastes like hot metal and salt water. She holds tight to the lightning just to feel it burn. Feels the answering sting in a line down her chest, sternum to navel. “ _R_ _ao, ta-rriv rraop-rao pahdh voiehd? Khap eiahm_ ,” she whispers. The words are tugged away, ripped from her lips. She wills it out, up, up to the right ears. The right heart. “ _K_ _hap eiahm, ewuhsh gehd_.”

* * *

1\. a formal introduction; or, _skulir_ : verb, the active form: to look, to examine.

_  
Kara is six years old when she finds out that she will have a husband. She considers it for two days, silently, before bringing it up to anyone._

_A tall figure in blue—that’s all Kara can see under her thin blanket—stands in the doorway of her bedroom. “Your mother says you’re not well. Do you want to come out from under that blanket?”_

_“No.”_

_“No?”  The bed creaks as she sits on Kara’s bed. “Then perhaps I shall sit here with you. Is that alright?” Kara murmurs her assent, scoots over a little to make space in the bed. “I brought your stars, little one. Are you sure you don’t want to see them? We were only partway through the primaries.” Astra waits a moment for Kara’s response. When it doesn’t come immediately, she offers, “You may hold the star jar, if you wish.”_

_Kara kicks her feet under the blanket as she considers that._

_Finally, she pulls down the covers to just under her eyes, peeks out. “Just the stars?” she asks, fixing her aunt with a suspicious look._

_Astra leans over, presses a kiss to her forehead. “Just the stars,” she promises, and Kara rolls around in her bed, bundles the blankets around herself, and thumps down into Astra’s lap. Her aunt pulls her close, strokes her hair back from her forehead._

_“There is my darling star,” she murmurs. She activates the holo-reader—Kara’s ‘star jar’—and scatters the stars across the ceiling. Once it’s active, she allows Kara to hold it in her little hands._

_Kara stays there, tucked up into Astra, listening to her explaining the primary stars and Astra cards her fingers down her long hair until Kara’s nervous gut unclenches and she asks what has been bothering her._

_“Does everyone get married?”_

_Astra’s voice falters and then stops. She looks down at her niece, bemused by the topic change. “Married?”_

_“Fardhogh-cheh says that everyone gets married. That parents pick someone and then you have to spend your_ whole life _with them.”_

_“Did he put it like that?” Astra crooks a finger under Kara’s chin, tilts it up to look at her. “Hmm, little one?” She tickles under Kara’s chin and Astra’s eyes, so clear and fond, are brighter than Rao’s midday light. Kara cuddles into her, ducks her head again. “Have you been concerned about this?”_

_“...No.”_

_Astra tickles at Kara’s shoulder, makes her squirm. “For how long?”_

_“…Two days.”_

_“I see. You_ do _like to keep things to yourself, don’t you, little one?” Kara shrugs. “Well, it is nothing to be concerned about. Marriage is a union between families.”_

_“Who will it be?”_

_“He will be of good standing—”_

_“Will he be_ nice _?” Kara asks, and with it comes the flood of questions that have blinded her for the last few days. “Do I know them? How long do I have? What happens? Do I_ have _to get married? Do I get to choose him? Why do I have to get married? What does it do? Is it scary?”_

_“These are a lot of questions.”_

_“I have a lot of questions,” Kara agrees._

_“A curious mind can be dangerous, little one,”_

_“Questions are good!” she argues, struggles to sit up and away, and Astra nods. She helps Kara, tries not to laugh at the bundle of a girl who wriggles away, irate at the suggestion that questions might not be a good thing._

_“Always. But you should share them with your family or else you may get lost in them.” Astra strokes  down her cheek. “And I would not like that.”_

_“Oh.” Kara waits a moment. “So?”_

_Astra glances away, tries not to smile. “Your betrothed,” she tells her niece, “will be chosen by your family, we who love you. We will not let you be bonded to someone unworthy, not when you are more precious to us than all else.”_

_“But what’s the_ point _?”_

_“Marriage is a union. Do you know of_ shokh _?”_

_“Truth,” Kara nods impatiently. “The first virtue.”_

_“The primary virtue, yes, on which we base all dealings._ Shokh _is the virtue all unions are based on. A family would never agree to a union without first knowing who their beloved shall be bonded to, just as one would never agree to an alliance or business without knowing who extends their hand. It is a virtue that persists throughout a union—_ shokh _is constant. Unwavering. It is about learning and knowledge and discovery. Sharing.” She hugs Kara to her, strokes her hair again, out of her thoughtful eyes. “Does that make sense, little one?”_

_“Yes. But,” Kara smiles, a little shy, when Astra laughs. “I have more questions.”_

_“Of course you do. Share them with me,” she encourages, sets the star field aside for another night._

_Alura joins them later, knocking gently on Kara’s bedroom door. She peeks in, relaxes against the door when she sees them curled there._

_“You are feeling better then, Kara?”  Kara nods—sheepish, small in her aunt’s arms, but she nods. “I’m so glad. You’ve had us worried. We had to call in reinforcements.”_

_“Reinforcements?” Kara sits up quickly, looks back over her shoulder at her aunt. “You’re reinforcements?”_

_Astra laughs, throws her head back. “Your parents were worried.” She lets Kara go when she wriggles away from her, goes to stand defiant in the centre of the room, her little frown stern and her little arms crossed. “Please do not be displeased with me, little one.”_

_Kara considers the request for a time, before she flicks her hair back over her shoulders and walks out of the room. She makes her way out of their home and down the long corridor before loud steps follow her and she breaks into a run before Zor-El plucks her clean off the ground and carries her home._

_“I’m mad at you.”_

_“At me, my daughter? Say it isn't so _—i_ t was your mother’s idea,” he tells her, in that low rumble of a voice she loves so much. She leans back into his chest—but keeps her arms folded to show her displeasure._

_“Zor-El!” Alura is waiting for them at the doorway to their quarters and she shoots him an unamused look before she cups Kara’s face, drags her thumbs over her cheeks. “We were worried,” she tells Kara. When her daughter just pouts, she nods for Zor-El to take her to the table. They sit her at the table and Kara swings her little feet, plops her chin down on the edge. Alura turns to her sister. “Astra, will you join us?”_

_“If the little one will have me,” she agrees, and Kara huffs but doesn’t disagree. She’s pretty sure she doesn’t get to disagree—Astra sounds far too amused for kara to have any_ real _say in the matter._

_It’s Alura’s night to cook and Kara waits to be served. Her little feet continue to swing under the chair and she holds her cutlery in a clumsy fist, prods at the food in front of her._

_Finally, she heaves a great sigh._

_“Who will you choose for me?”_

_Her father looks up from his comms, peers across at her. “Choose for what?”_

_“To be my husband.” She pouts a little, bottom lip jutting out with a stubborn, stubborn chin. “If he’s not nice, I'm not gonna say yes.”_

_“He’ll be nice, my sweet,” her mother laughs. Kara frowns over at her and Alura reaches out, draws a finger down the crinkle in her forehead. “Why are you so distraught? He will be your companion, your most trusted friend.”_

_“Because of truth?” Kara rolls her eyes, plops her fork in her food, swirls it around. “What about…love?” She stumbles over the word a little. It’s not said often. She’s only heard it twice before; her aunt and uncle, in love, and once by her tutor when Kara asked him to explain it._

_“Love?” Zor-El blinks twice before he smiles at his wife, and Astra. “You have a few years before we’ll start looking. At least two.”_

_“Zor-El!”_

_“I'm joking, I’m joking!” To Kara, whose pouting has doubled, he smiles. Leans down to press a kiss against her soft, sweet-smelling hair. “If you find someone,” he tells her, “let us know.”_

* * *

 

She wears her outfit like armour, black and red, and her smile is like a serpent—quick, striking, dangerous. Beautiful.

Kara knows who she is—she wasn’t allowed out of the house the day Alex found out that Lena Luthor had moved to National City—but it’s not the same as standing in front of her. Which she only gets to do for a split second because Lena Luthor moves surprisingly quickly in her heels.

“I won’t ask how you got to this level without an escort,” she says with that smile again, “if you promise to make this quick. I’ve a meeting in fifteen minutes, one I really can _not_ miss.”

Her eyes linger on Kara longer than on Clark.

“I know what you’re here for,” she says, and she flicks her hair back over her shoulders with a quick gesture. Strides into her office—Kara glances around at the sleek modern lines, the white, the small touches of any life few and far between. This isn’t an office to relax in, this isn’t a place to hide in. She follows the lines back to Lena. “You’re here to find out why I wasn’t aboard the Venture yesterday.”

She doesn’t give an inch the entire conversation—only stumbles over her words once when she looks at Kara again, _curious,_ and this time Kara is able to catch the look, to hold her gaze, and then Kara gets to introduce herself.

It’s…clumsy.

Clumsy is really the only word for it. She stumbles over her words and it’s not polished or smart—and it makes probably the worst impression for CatCo not to mention herself—but Lena listens before throwing out a little tidbit Clark’s way.

Kara can’t get a firm idea on who she is though—Clark thinks he knows, Clark _always_ thinks he knows, but Kara waits and waits and then Lena is looking right at her and that’s the moment. She looks her dead in the eyes and it’s the chink in the armour: “I’m just a woman trying to make a name for herself outside her family”, Lena tells her, and when she asks if they can understand, Kara says yes. Before even thinking about it. It was just a glimpse but...she’s _seen_ her.

She can’t stop seeing her.

She’s dynamic, and brilliant, and quick, and she’s built herself up again and Kara isn’t able to recapture that moment—that moment when she’s sure, absolutely, of who she is seeing—but each time she gets close enough to open another door, it confirms what Kara has already seen.

Lena, who builds hospitals for children. Who defies her own mother. Who works late into the night, who says she will change her company for good and follows through, who dares and pushes and _fights_ , who has something sharp, fierce, dangerous inside of her and keeps it locked up tight. Who fears that part of herself. And, and she's someone who fills Kara's office with flowers, who crosses into Kara’s life briefly, gently, their lives just grazing into one another—a tentative touch that leaves Kara breathless, skin prickling all over—and who holds herself back like she’s afraid she’ll be overstepping should she stay too long. Someone who leans in and admits with a quirk of a smile, a breezy laugh, that she only has one friend, and Kara wants to take her hand when Lena’s eyes tell her not only that it’s true, but that she’s not sure she even has that many.

* * *

 “Oh my god,” Lena whispers, and Kara buckles under the weight of a truck for a split second before she stands—it’s not that it’s heavy, it’s really not at all, it’s just that she’s, well, she's holding a truck in her hands and Lena is standing two feet away and staring. “Oh m- you’re _her_ ,” she breathes, and there’s something small and pained and shaky in her voice, in her eyes, and Kara is afraid.

She’s afraid, standing in jeans and flats and her favourite bright yellow sweater and holding a _truck_ over her _head_. Her glasses are sitting askew on her nose, the woman she thinks is her best friend looks like she doesn’t recognise her, and the box of donuts she’d been holding is on the road. Splattered.

_She’ll hate you for it,_  Lillian had said, and the words spread through Kara like ice from her sternum and out, freezing her chest and making her breath come brittle and sharp.

“ _L_ _ena_ ,” she starts, and it snaps them both out of the frozen moment.

Lena glances quickly around, hisses at Kara to put the truck down.

Kara heaves the truck off her shoulders and catches it before it hits the ground, lowering it the last of the way gently. She checks on the driver, who is unconscious, and with a nervous look Lena’s way Kara pulls down her glasses to check him over. Because what the hell, right?

Lena knows.

Lena _knows_.

Lena knows now, so Kara can use her x-ray vision around her and free him from the crumpled cabin where he had crashed before the truck careened toward them—can plunge her bare hand into the steel and rip it open like paper to free him. Pull out a man easily twice her size without a flicker of effort.

She lays him out on the pavement, calls the ambulance for him, and when she looks over at Lena to decide on their next move, Lena takes her by the hand and Kara follows.

“Lena,”

“Don’t.”

Kara bites down on her tongue all the way back to her apartment. Her hands are shaking badly when she tries to unlock the door so Lena does it for her, and Kara opens and closes her hands but they still feel cold right to the tips.

Lena shrugs out of her coat, hangs it on the hook by the door. She drops her bag on the floor.

Kara stands in the centre of her dining space room and closes her teeth around her tongue and- “Look at me,” Lena asks of her, and Kara shakes all the way down her spine but lifts her chin and opens herself up for Lena to see. To see _her_.

“Lena,”

“It’s too late to say it was adrenaline,” Lena tells her, voice thick. “Or a doppelgänger. Or whatever it is you’re about to say so spare us both the discomfort of yet another excuse.”

“I wasn’t—I wasn’t going to make an excuse,” Kara whispers. “I was just going to say that I’m sorry.”

Lena purses her lips, pulls her brows into a harsh frown, but what makes it so, so _bad_ is that Kara can still see her. See how she’s doing it—letting herself get angry, get cold and harsh, because this whole thing is _hurting her_ and it’s easier, better, less shitty to be cold, to be angry, than have someone you trust—trusted?—hurt you.

“What was it?” Lena asks.

Kara makes a tiny sound of incomprehension.

“What _convinced you_ ,” she clarifies, voice so clear and steady, “of who I am? That I couldn’t be trusted?” Kara stares across at her, uncertain, and Lena flattens her lips until they're white. “I'll guess then, shall I?" She slaps her phone down on the counter, stalks over to closer to the door. For a moment, she faces away from Kara and when she turns back around she is wearing a parody of a smile. “Beth. It was Beth, wasn’t it? You see, I _knew_  that was too good to be true. You listening to me, holding me." She chuckles, the breathlessness of pain stealing the humour. "What I _should_ have known is that you were hearing how easily I could become a true Luthor.”

“Lena, _no_ ,”

“Or did I have no chance at all? Dear Lex,” she sneers, top lip curling. “My dear brother. _H_ _e_ didn’t stand a chance, you know. Not with Lillian for a mother. That’s how it goes, isn’t it? We all become our parents? It’ll be me next."

“Stop it,” Kara whispers. Lena’s words are too prepared to be new. She’s showing more of herself to Kara now than maybe she even knows. Or maybe there’s no reason now to hold back these fears. Or maybe it’s worth the cost of saying them out loud when Lena knows they’ll hurt Kara the most.

“ _S_ _top_?” she laughs, a brittle sound. “Why? Why should I? I saved the world with you!”

“I know.”

“But it doesn’t matter _what_  I do, only what I  _become_. And everyone’s made their mind up about that already.”

“ _N_ _o_ ,” Kara tells her, takes a step toward her.

Lena steps quicker away, toward the kitchen to put the island between them.

Kara stops. “I refuse to believe that's true,” she insists. “I see you, Lena,”

“You and everyone else,”

“I _see_ you! Not your parents, not your brother. I see _you_.” Lena scoffs. Kara reaches out again. Not to Lena, since she won’t allow it, but instead to press her fingers to the hard wood of the counter. “We are not our parents. And you are not this cold, _hard_ person you pretend to be. I won’t let you use that excuse!”

“Excuse?” Lena’s eyebrows shoot up.

“To leave! To give in, give _up_. Whatever it is you want to do! I won’t let you, I will _fight_ for you,”

“Right,” she scoffs.

“You are my friend and I am not losing you over this,” Kara insists, nods firmly.

“Friends. A Super and a Luthor,”

“Kara and Lena,”

“Oh please,”

“ _Y_ _ou_ please,” Kara returns, tries to mimic Lena’s scoffing tone. She flings her hands up, frustrated. “Stop making this into _that_.”

“We can’t escape it that easily, Kara,” Lena says, forcing more of that drawling edge into her tone in a way Kara knows is supposed to make her feel stupid and childish and little. “We are what we are made to be—”

“Then guess what,” Kara bites out, narrows her eyes. “I’m a _soldier_. I’m a warrior, made only to follow orders. I was _built_. I was chosen specifically to be fast, and strong, and smart, and the perfect soldier. That’s who I was made to be. Or, or if I am to become my parents like you think then guess what. My parents lied to their entire planet. _Killed_ their whole world. My father built a bomb to kill everyone except for people like him. The one your mother found?” Kara smiles, humourless. "He made that."

Lena stares, eyes dipping to that smile.

“And my mother? She cast judgement on her own sister and put her in the depths of space. It’s an awful place.” Her voice dips, wavers. “There is no light there, and no hope. And my mother put her there to let her rot. My parents were proud and stupid and selfish,” Kara tells her, and her voice shakes. She’s distantly aware that she’s crying but Lena…Lena can never let herself be soft, Kara knows that about her, so she’ll do it for her. She’ll melt, she’ll cry, she’ll be soft, and give and give and _give_. She’ll do that, if that’s what needs to be done.

Kara pulls on every scrap of El courage to push her shoulders back and do just that. Keeps her eyes steadily on Lena, open. She sniffs, wipes at her cheek, but doesn’t look away.

“They built a spaceship in secret and they saved me, but they lied to everyone there and let them all die. Just to save me and my cousin.”

Lena blinks.

Her lipstick is a dark plum today. Kara watches her hesitate, pull a corner of her bottom lip into her mouth and suck away some of the colour.

“And, and maybe I am going to be like them. But I want to believe that I will be their best qualities. We, Kryptonians, we came from people who had forgotten how to love so much so that my cousin was the first natural born child in generations. I don’t understand how that can be,” she says quietly. Her gaze goes a little fuzzy and, for a moment, she thinks she can see them standing there with Lena in her kitchen. “They loved me so much that they did everything they could. Every selfish, horrible, secret thing they had to do to save me. And my father was proud and protective and he made an awful thing in the defence of his planet and I won’t do what he did. But his decisions? I am the only one left who knows them, and I will bear that. Because if...if I don’t, then maybe one day I _will_  become that alien your mother is so afraid of. I am my parents child, but I will be _me_ first. And I,” Kara swallows. Her eyelashes flutter and she finally closes her eyes, leans in against the corner of the kitchen island. Presses the blunt edge of it against her palm. “I just wanted you to see her. Me. Not telling you was never, _ever_ about you not being good enough, Lena,” she insists. “I just wanted to be me.”

She thinks she hears lena sigh, hears the faintest “oh” escaping on the back of that breath, but when she opens her eyes Lena still looks cold and unmoved. The longer Lena stares, the more Kara wants to pull away.

But she doesn’t. Or can’t. Not when she remembers Lena curled into that couch telling her about a woman in prison she wants to kill, and about how afraid she is, and about the paths laid out ahead of her and how she’s _paralysed_. Because down each path is more fear, or madness, or death, and she wants so desperately to pick the right path. Not for herself, but for all the many people she could hurt on the wrong one. 

And Kara remembers how Lena had let Kara hold her.

She sees her.

And Lena stares right back. It hits her, in a lurching way that feels like falling without powers, that Lena sees her too. Sees _someone_.

Kara desperately wants to know what Lena sees, who she is to this woman. Feels herself crack a little when she realises what she’s done. What she’s tried to hide, the secrets she’s laid out, whatever hope there was behind them, to pretend to be a person who Lena could like.

Lena, who has had to live with artifice and secrets her whole life.

“I’m sorry,” she says into the silence, and Lena jerks her chin up slightly. Kara sags. Lifts an exhausted hand up to her glasses, apparently still sitting askew. Huh. She hadn’t noticed. “I’m so sorry. I just, I wanted,”

“What were their names?”

Lena looks as surprised about the question as Kara feels, if the way she plucks at her fingers means anything.

“Names?”

“Your parents.”

“Oh. I,” Kara blinks a few times, quickly. “Alura, my mother. And Zor-el, my father. And me, Kara Zor-el.”

Lena nods. Folds her arms over her stomach, nervous fingers clenching around her arms. “You took your fathers name.”

“We aren’t so different,” Kara jokes, and Lena’s lips quirk upward very, very slightly. “They would have liked you. Intelligence was one of our most admired traits.”

Lena doesn’t seem to know what to do with that, and kara doesn’t know what to do at all.

All the tension has seeped out of the moment, leaving the corners of the room hollow and making each breath and nervous step sound louder than they are. Finally Kara reaches up, shakes her hair out of its plait. She tosses her glasses onto the couch. After a moment, she goes after the glasses and places them instead on the coffee table because she has twelve pairs of broken glasses as historical evidence that she’s going to forget they’re there and sit on them.

She runs her hands through her loose hair, plucking out the bobby pins.

“May I see?”

Kara yelps, a bobby pin yanking at her hair, surprised by the question. “Huh?”

“The,” Lena unfolds an arm, gestures toward Kara who stands frozen. “The…I mean,” she laughs quick, nervous, eyes flicking over Kara like she’s suddenly realising she’s been fighting with a superpowered _alien._ “You held up a truck.”

“It was going to hit you.”

“You can fly.” There’s the slightest edge of hesitation, like Lena is about to say screw this, it _was_ adrenaline after all, and Kara steps up into the air before she can. Touches her fingers to the ceiling. Floats back down. She’s not going back, she’s not running away from this. She can’t. Not anymore.

"I can.”

“You saved my life.”

“You’ve saved mine too.”

“That’s true enough,” Lena agrees, lips snaking into a satisfied smirk. Kara is enraptured by the way her eyes soften, though. She feels her jaw drop open a little, can’t help it, and something shifts and settles in her chest.

Kara shivers.

Lena knows, finally. everything is out in the open.

Lena sees her too. What she does with it now, Kara doesn’t know, but after all of this time...it’s a beginning.


	2. Chapter 2

2\. exchange of food; or, _rrahdh shpahgh:_ noun, splitting of bread

_She winds her way through the crowd of petitioners, throws herself through the doorway closing behind her mother. Alura doesn't look surprised or displeased to see her—she reaches down and takes Kara’s hand, bends almost double to kiss her forehead, whispers a fond hello._

_“And what does rraotiv fardhogh-cheh think about this adventure, my darling?”_

_Kara shrugs, not caring all that much to think about her tutor now that she is away from him. Counts the steps all the way down the hallway. She looks up when they reach the next doorway. “He fell asleep in the sun. Again.”_

_“Ah, so Rao approves of your disobedience,” Alura laughs, and Kara grins toothily up at her mother. “I see. Well then.” She kneels, cups Kara’s cheeks and leans in, brushes their noses together. Her eyes are bright and so, so happy. “Would you like to join me today?”_

_Before she even finishes her question, Kara is nodding._

_Alura nods, pulls Kara up and onto her lap. They sit together at a small, raised table. Alura lifts her hand to the guard, who bows slightly and awaits her command. “You may bring in the first petitioner,” she tells them, and when the group is brought in, they look surprised to see Kara there. But Alura greets them and they smile and bow to her and Kara half watches, half listens, but is mostly interested in the roof and its staggered tiles._

_The meeting is all numbers and requests and corrections and Kara winds her fingers in the soft, soft fabric of her mothers sleeve. She listens to her clever questions, probing but respectful, and watches the numbers flick across the screens. At one point, Kara leans forward in her lap and adjusts one of the figures, watches the ladder of numbers adjust accordingly._

_It’s some time before she notes the lack of sound, and the eyes on her, and Kara twists to look up at her mother suddenly afraid that she did something wrong._

_“It was wrong,” she explains, in a small voice, and Alura reads through the correction slowly. When she’s done, she kisses Kara’s forehead again._

_“So it was.”_

_She checks the figures for the next three groups, delighted by the opportunity to play with the numbers. The last of the three groups is lead by a man a full foot taller than Alura, and much more broad in the shoulders and waist, and his voice is as big as his body. Kara leans back into her mother’s chest, feels her certainty in the lines and set of her body when she denies him what he demands._

_When Zor-El slips into the room and takes Kara away, she goes with him, craning her neck back to see what happens to the red-faced man._

_“Why does he look like that?”_

_“He’s angry,” Zor-El tells her, needing only a quick look back to see who she means and to deduce his expression. He sounds sure enough, so Kara accepts the answer. He swings her up off her feet and up high into his arms, making her laugh. “Again?”_

_“Yes please,” she giggles. He sets her down, waits until she’s fidgeting with anticipation before he whips her up into the air again, making her shriek. She shakes her head no this time when he asks if she wants to go again, and so he settles her on his hip instead._

_Kara leans into his shoulder, winds her arms around his neck._

_“Why is he angry?”_

_“Hmm? Who?”_

_“The red-faced man.”_

_“Ah. Well,” he thinks her question over for a moment. “Your mother approves or disapproves petitions, you know.”_

_“Yes.”_

_“And she disapproved his request.”_

_“Why?”_

_“Because his figures likely didn’t prove what he said they did. Or they didn’t suggest he needed as much as he was asking for.”_

_“Why was he asking for it if he didn’t need it?”_

_“Because he wanted it.”_

_“And why did mother deny it?”_

_“Because he didn’t need it.”_

_“But he wanted it,” Kara says. “Isn’t it nice to give people what they want?”_

_“Yes,” he says. “Sometimes. But the figures your mother handles are not for personal use. He was asking for more money for his experiment or his project, and he would set aside the extra for himself instead of using it for what he told your mother it was for.”_

_“So…he was lying.”_

_“Perhaps. That is for your mother to determine.”_

_“Hmm.” Kara looks back over his shoulder, all the way down the long corridor. She can’t see her mothers court anymore, the corridor bends away from it, but she looks down it and thinks about the situation they had left behind. “He was very red.”_

_“He was angry,” Zor-El says again, in a voice that sounds like he is agreeing with her._

_Kara commits the mans face to the catalogue she has of anger. The silent, quiet anger between her parents when they disagree. The smashing kind of anger of Astra, the one she’s never seen but she’s heard. The go-to-your-room-this-instant anger that her parents turn on her when she’s done something foolish, the one that is at least partly fear. And now, the anger that is red in the face and white at the knuckle and makes her insides twist uneasily._

_“Will mother be alright?”_

_“What?” Zor-El looks down at her, mouth twisting in surprise. “Yes, of course she will.”_

_Kara breathes out a gust of relief. “Good.”_

_“Is that all your questions? Because it’s time for dinner.” Kara groans, leans herself so far backward she’s almost topping out of his arms and he laughs, deep from the belly, and braces his arms behind her back to keep her on his hip. “I’m not that bad, i zhor.”_

_“Yes you are.”_

_“Ooph,” Zor-El stumbles, groans loud to make her laugh. “You wound me.”_

_“Mother will send you away if I die.”_

_He laughs again, holds her so she can flop all the way down to the ground. She dangles, lets her fingers fall low and brush against the rough stone of the floor._

_“Did you trick her?” she asks._

_“Trick who?”_

_“Mother. When you exchanged food? Did you really cook for her?”_

_“Hmm.” Zor-El picks her up once her face has gone red, but Kara struggles until he sets her down. He takes her hand and she walks at his side. “No, I—yes, I remember, I bought food for the exchange.”_

_“You_ bought _food?” Kara grimaces. “What did you buy?”_

_“Sweets. From Daxam.”_

_“Daxam!” She pokes her tongue out, knowing what the Daxamites are like. Or, she’s heard what they’re like. But that’s bad enough._

_“They may not be polite, or thoughtful, or reliable,” he tells her, “but they are_ exceptional _hedonists and they make very good sweets.” The door to their quarters whistles open at their approach. Kara shakes free of his hand, hurries to fling herself onto the long couch where she dumped her holo-reader that morning. “It’s dinner time, Kara.”_

_“Did you cook?”_

_“Yes.”_

_Kara grimaces, buries her face in her blanket. She stands, wraps it purposefully around herself to keep from looking at him. “I want sweets from Daxam too,” she tells him when she’s done._

_“Oh do you?”_

_“Yes.”_

_“How about this,” he tells her. “You eat your dinner and I will ask your mother if she can come with us next week on our trip. And we’ll see what sweets they have in Ardu.”_

_“Really?” Kara shoots upright. She flaps her hands until they’re free of the blanket. “She’ll come?”_

_“I said I will_ ask _. She’s very busy.”_

_“You’ll ask! You’ll ask!” Kara cries, bounces out of her seat to jump at him, and around him. She stumbles, can barely stand still long enough for him to help her disentangle her legs from her blanket but when he has finished, she flings her arms around his legs and bounces. “You’ll ask! You’ll ask!”_

_“If you eat dinner, yes,” Zor-El agrees, and Kara grabs his hand with both of hers and tugs him to the table._

* * *

“This is a terrible idea.”

“You’ve already cancelled your meetings for tonight,” Jess reminds her, tapping away at her tablet and purposefully not looking up. “So, terrible or not, you _will_ be going.”

“But—”

“Lena.” Jess closes whatever she’s working on, lays the tablet across her thighs so she can lean in, a well-meaning and narrow smile on her lips as a warning. “I have a date. A date who I have cancelled on _twice_ already. Please don’t make me do it to him again. _Please_.”

“A guy? What guy?” Lena pulls her keyboard toward her.

Jess laughs. “Don’t look him up. His name is Nathan, no last name.” Lena searches through Jess’s facebook, until Jess shuts her down from the tablet. “He’s nice, leave him alone.”

“Should I be offended?” Lena teases. Before Jess can answer, she continues, “What happened to—” She narrows her eyes thoughtfully and tries to pluck the name from half minutes of personal chatter they’ve shared. “Hannah?”

“Haley. She got a job,” she tells Lena, a little morose. And then, grimacing, “In _Star City_. Probably a good idea to break up. Neither love nor money could convince me to move to that hell city. Not even the amount you could afford to pay me.”

“A challenge?”

Jess glares, playfully but Lena definitely sees a glint of steel there. She makes a mental note not to even _suggest_ Jess for reassignment—not that she would. She’s incredibly capable and a good friend, for whatever that’s worth. 

(A lot.)

They grin stupidly, tiredly, at one another for a minute before returning their attention to their work. Lena reads half-heartedly through a report for a minute before she sighs. 

“Tell me that’s a _we’ve been working since yesterday morning and you’re an angel so you can leave work early this evening Jess_ sigh and not a _I’m rethinking this yet again with my enormous brain_ sigh.”

Lena props her elbows on her desk, leans her chin into her hand. Lifts her eyebrows high. 

“I’m only clarifying because I hate when you dither and I love to leave work early,” Jess says and she smiles prettily. Very innocently. 

“I guess I can’t fault you for that,” Lena drawls. “Not everyone has my inner drive for working hard.”

“Is that what we’re calling it?”

“I find it’s better than calling it the desperate urge to work beyond my healthy limits for the approval of others.” The joke falls slightly flat when Jess looks at her gently, mouth opening very slightly like she wants to say something. Lena waves a hand dismissively. “It was a _let’s leave early_ sigh, you were right.”

Jess nods. “And, um, you’re still going out with Kara?”

“I think so.” She checks her messages, finds the replies Kara has sent her. She rolls her eyes with incredible fondness. “Would you say this is a yes?” Lena spins her computer screen around so Jess can read her invitation of,

— _Dinner tonight?_

and the messages Kara sent in response. 

— _dinner is my fave meal!!  
_ _—that’s a lie :( its only my 2nd fave  
_ _—bkfast is my ULTIMATE fave but dinner & dissert sit on the same lvl  
_ _—desert?  
_ _—dessert  
_ _—lunch is weird tho  
_ _—its a weird meal?????  
_ _—bc u can have pretty much whatever u want!!! pizza?? tacos??? ice-cream??  
_ _—alex agrees its a trash meal  
_ _—also, alex says hello_

“I’m not sure _what_ that is,” Jess laughs, and she closes her eyes, laughing, when Lena taps out a confirmation request. “I was joking.” She shakes her head. Lena shrugs and sends it anyway.

— _Was that a yes?_

“It was definitely a yes, Lena.”

Lena shrugs again. She drums her fingers on her desk while she waits for Kara’s answer. She pretends, for a while, to read through the contract she’s working on but eventually she discards even that and just…drops her chin onto her hand again and watches the screen. 

— _YES  
_ _—SRY YES I LOVE DINNER  
_ _— & WOULD LOVE 2 GET DINNER W U!!!!_

“There,” Jess tells her, and Lena doesn’t fire her despite the terribly knowing way Jess draws the word out. Like Lena is a child.  Worse.  Like she’s a child with a _crush_.  “She would _love_ to get dinner with you.”

“You’re insolent.”

“And _you_ are welcome." Jess clicks her tablet off, stretches out to lay it on Lena’s desk. She claps her hands, gives her a bright, fake smile. “Now, I have to dash but _please_ don’t call me for anything less than a genuine emergency.”

“Hang on, isn’t that supposed to be my line? I’m the boss.”

“Mm. Have a good evening, Miss Luthor.” Jess laughs, hurries out of Lena’s office with an eye to the clock. She collects her jacket and handbag. 

Lena listens with half an ear to the sounds of her moving around, shutting down her computer, but then there’s just silence. 

She reaches for the taser in her drawer. 

“Oh,” Jess says, sounding a little confused. But mostly amused. “Hello already, Miss Danvers.”

“Oh no, Kara please. But also, um, hi? Already?”

“Eager for dinner?” Jess continues and the pieces must click because Kara is hurrying to say something not incriminating, or suspicious, or Supergirl-ish. 

“I’m—yes, eager. Yeah! I was already on my way though, I’m not, ha, not _that_ fast,” she stutters her way through the excuse and Lena smiles, imagines the way her hands flutter and reach up for her glasses. She clicks her computer to sleep mode and collects her own bag, enjoys listening to Kara’s awkwardness for a moment before she interrupts. 

“Hold the elevator would you, Jess? We’ll join you.”

“Of course, Miss Luthor.”

Lena locks the office door, looks up finally to take in Kara in all her bright glory. 

Thankfully, Jess says nothing about the way Lena just _stares_ for a moment, breath hitching. She does, however, clear her throat when the elevator beeps and the doors begin to close. 

“Please, after you,” Lena gestures for Kara to step in first, but Kara clearly had the same idea because they do an odd little dance where Kara hesitates and Lena hesitates and then they both step forward, and then Kara _laughs_ and touches her fingers to her glasses and takes a _big_ step backwards and Lena shakes her head, smiling, and moves to finally set in next to her assistant—who stares very purposefully forward at the elevator buttons and presses twice, once for the ground level and once for parking. 

Jess stares intently, unblinkingly, at her phone. Lena watches her for a few seconds to make sure her eyes _stay there_ —there’s a raise in it for her if she does, she thinks—before she takes the opportunity to look at Kara again. 

Kara, who is already staring at her, apparently unfazed by the idea that Jess could see her doing so. Kara, with her truly happy smile and wide, deep blue eyes. 

Kara mouths a silent “ _Hi”_ and Lena tilts her head, eyes slanting fondly down her friend. 

She’s soft all over: soft, thick sweater in a deep red too bright for maroon, too gentle to be crimson, a sweater Lena wants to bury her hands in—her braid loose, Kara all _windswept_ , all wisps and wind-chafed cheeks—jeans, soft too, distressed, and cuffed at the ankles and splatters of white paint down the legs. Lena’s eyes linger at Kara’s ankles, unable to look away from what are not only the brightest socks she’s ever seen, but also mismatched. 

Jess clears her throat again.

Lena jerks, looks up to find Kara is looking at her too—with something intent, bright behind her eyes—and that Jess is holding the door open to the ground level.

She steps out, gives Jess a sliver of a smile. Jess—now leaning toward either a _significant_ raise, or a slight demotion, Lena hasn’t decided yet—gives her a mocking little wave goodbye, just a flicker of her fingers. 

The whole situation, the awkwardness of it all, seems to shoot right over Kara’s head because she trots out after Lena and gives Jess her normal, wide smile and a wave. 

“See you next week!”

“Have a good evening, Miss Danvers,” Jess returns, and the formality of it gives Kara pause for all of half a second. 

“It’s _Kara_ ,” she insists, and she hesitates but the elevator doors have shut already and there’s no way to tell if Jess was listening. 

Actually, Kara has x-ray vision and super hearing, Lena reminds herself, so she could probably tell. 

They go out the main entrance and Kara seems to know everyone not only by face but also by name. The security guard—who Lena knows as a fairly stern man, taciturn though not unkind—smiles at Kara. The smile fades when he sees Lena. 

“Hullo, Jackson. How's Lydia? How are the classes going?”

“Uh, she’s,” he looks to Lena, scans her bag through quickly. She takes it, gives him a flicker of a smile, and walks on to the front doors to wait for Kara. “She’s real good, really enjoying them,” he tells Kara once Lena is gone.

It’s nice that Kara can pull this kind of friendship from all kinds of people, she thinks. Thinks it _loudly_ , because it’s better to focus on that than on the way they clam up when she happens by. 

“She—Miss Danvers?”

“One moment, Jackson.” Kara comes after Lena, takes her gently by the arm and leads her back to the front desk. “Is she learning a lot?” she asks him, like they had never stopped, and when he hesitates she smiles so brightly, eyes fixed right on him, that it would be impossible to miss that she’s making a point of it. 

He drums his fingers against his belt for a second. Clears his throat. “Yes, Miss Danvers.”

Lena doesn’t wince at how stilted he sounds. As if she ever would.

She just pulls out her phone and pretends like she isn’t listening at all, a tried and true method of making people marginally more comfortable. She also has to pretend that Kara’s hand on her arm doesn’t feel like it’s _burning_ and that is, in a word, difficult. 

There are plenty of reasons for that, which she can dissect alone in her apartment with her good friend

Essentially, though, it’s the visibility of the gesture. People can _see_ them, can _see_ Kara’s hand on her and it’s hard to mistake the move for anything less than, well, possessiveness. A claim. Lena knows she ought to pull away so Kara doesn’t have to deal with that. With people knowing this sweet reporter is actually _friends_ with her, because there is a huge difference between doing just enough to get the best stories and actually _liking_ someone. 

But…Kara came after her, and _she_ took _Lena’s_ arm, and she’s not letting go. 

So Lena allows it and stares down at her phone and tries to make it less obvious that all she can concentrate on is the feeling of Kara’s fingers slipping over the apparently very sensitive skin of her wrist. 

She sighs very quietly in relief when Jackson continues, and Kara squeezes her arm reassuringly. And subtly, thank god. 

“You know my Lyds,” he says. “Fancies herself an inventor, y’know. Made this robot, she’s real proud of it. Doesn’t do much but it says a couple of phrases and holds the dogs leash, jiggles it around a bit. I mean, _I_ think that’s pretty advanced, can’t for the life of me figure out how she did it,” Jackson tells them—well, tells _Kara_ —and he pulls his phone from the desk and flicks to a photo of the small robot. 

Lena takes a quick peek—it seems to be made from several different toys, and she can see a rudimentary attempt at a secondary movement toggle, likely to move the tail, but that looks to be homemade and not one that she’s repurposed. Creative. She nods her approval, which Jackson must see because he wavers a little and returns his phone to the desk drawer. 

“In any case, I appreciate you telling me about the classes.”

“Of course!” Kara beams, eyes crinkling. “I’d been researching a whole lot of them! For my latest article,” she tells him, voice saccharine. “I think it’s such a great thing for L-Corp to do, promoting and providing activities like that for children. Especially the junior STEM projects. Don’t you think?”

“It’s—L-Corp runs them?”

“ _Well_ ,” Kara laughs, “technically no. National City Sunshine Students is a subsidiary of a company that builds programs for schools and learning centres, but _that_ company is a subsidiary of L-Corp and Lena has been very insistent about boosting the funding for groups like that.” Lena has to be imagining the way her glasses glint when Kara shifts them slightly. “Isn’t it so cool? All the great stuff Lena gets to do behind the scenes? Children are our future, after all,” she says, and Lena pulls her arm away from Kara, nods to Jackson, and makes her way outside. 

It isn’t long before Kara follows. 

They walk almost a full block in silence before Lena stops, turns to her. 

Her jaw works for a moment as she figures out what she wants to say—she turns over an angry comment or two, and a joke, before finally settling on an exhausted “You aren’t subtle”. She clicks open her purse, slips her phone into it and searches through it like there’s actually something she wants. There isn’t. She just…she _can’t_ —she can’t look at this totally infuriating woman who keeps defending her in front of near perfect strangers who aren’t even attacking her, aren’t even being rude. 

“I wasn’t trying to be.”

Kara tilts her face up to the sky. She shoves her hands into her pockets, strides along next to her when Lena scoffs and continues on. “I wasn’t! I think that if they’re going to take your money, they can at least know what they’re getting into, right?”

Lena frowns. 

Kara nods, taps a finger to her temple. “ _Think_ about it—if they’re willing to work for you when they think you're evil’s little sister,” she says with only the slightest waver in her tone to show she’s hoping that’s okay to say, hoping that Lena knows that _she_ doesn’t think that about her, “then there has to be a reason for that. And sure, I mean, everyone has to work to eat, which is strange.”

Lena wants to delve into _that_ comment—half to escape this whole conversation, half in vested interest—but Kara pushes on quickly. 

“But for the people who work there because it used to be Luthor Corp, well, either they’re the kind of person we need to keep an eye on or they’re the kind of people who will be far happier knowing they’re working for someone who is..”

“Yes?”

“You,” Kara finishes simply, turns her face away from the last of the sun as it sinks behind the buildings. It catches on her cheek when she turns to smile at Lena. 

Lena stares for a moment. How could she not? At Kara’s sweet smile, and the way the light burnishes the curve of her cheek, and chin, and smile, and casts the rest of her into shadow. The kind of shadow that hints and hides but has nothing malicious about it. She considers pulling Kara into the nearest alley, fisting her hands into that red sweater and pushing her back up against brick walls and pulling her down into the dark with her—all dark, all dirt, all teeth and nails and breath come hard—and giving her a deep and profound display of what she is _really_ like. 

As quickly as the thought occurs to her, it passes—honestly, who does she think she is? Some child book villain? She blinks it away in a split second. 

“We’re almost there,” Lena tells her, and leads the way to the restaurant. She has to keep blinking away the thought of leaving bruise-blue marks along Kara’s neck—and chin, and chest, and thighs—every time she sees the brick alley walls they pass. 

Would that—is that even possible? For Kara to bruise? When she’s powerless, almost certainly, but what about the rest of the time? Would she bruise at all or would it simply not work no matter how very diligently someone went about the attempt?

“You’re walking _really_ fast,” Kara comments, lengthening her stride to keep up. She keeps her satchel pinned to her side with one hand to stop it from bumping against her leg. 

“We-” Lena clears her throat, feels her neck start to flush when she hears how flustered she sounds. “We have a reservation.”

Kara takes that at face-value until they appear outside the dive bar. She tilts her head to the side, clearly confused. She looks up at the flickering neon sign that just reads _24HRS_ in blue—which she seems to love, actually, because she spares a moment to grin delightedly at Lena—and at the posters plastered all over the front wall, bedraggled from the rain and age-spotted. 

“Is this the right place?” she asks. Lena nods, so Kara just…she just _trusts_ her, gives her a wide smile and bounces on the balls of her feet. “Okay! Great! What is it?”

“I found it online,” Lena explains, but before she can articulate the why and what, the door flings open. A couple wanders out into the street, followed by the sound of a classic jukebox and a warmth spiced with something sharp and delicious. 

Kara follows her nose forward, reaches back to take Lena’s hand. 

She peers in at the peeling plastic diner booths, the wall of bottles, the bar owner Lena knows, after visiting in person the night before, is called Hugo and he doesn’t care whether she’s a Luthor or an alien so long as she’s got money. 

Which he had told her, word for word. 

“Wow!” Kara bounces again, forgets to hold her bag in place and she quickly moves to still it when it knocks hard against her side and something, hopefully inexpensive, sounds like it crumples. “What is this place?”

She tugs Lena inside, not waiting for an answer.

Lena rolls her eyes when she sees the red brick walls. 

Of course they’re brick, of course she can’t get a break. 

Kara feels the tiny hesitation and she immediately stops in the hallway, leans back against the wall—which, wow, doesn’t help Lena’s imagination _at all_ —and she fixes her with a curious look. 

“Are you alright? We don’t have to go in if you’ve changed your mind,” she tells her, all earnest and thoughtful, and Lena shakes her head. Kara doesn’t look convinced until Lena steps ahead of her and it’s her turn to tug Kara. 

“Come on,” she insists. “I thought of you.” She takes her to the bar where the menu book sits and she flips through it until she reaches the back where it boasts a burger so formidable that only four people have ever managed to finish it in under fifteen minutes. “Here.” She taps a finger on the picture. 

Kara reads through the description and, when she’s done, she looks at Lena with awe.

“This sounds like so much fun!” Hugo hears and stomps over and, when he takes out his notebook, Kara orders _two_ and then turns to Lena. “And what do you want?”

“Sweetheart,” Hugo interrupts, “no way you can eat two.”

“Thank you,” Kara says back, unfailingly polite, unfailingly steely, “but I can and will. Also, do you, can I get my photo on the wall? Do you do that?”

Hugo points a thick finger to the wall behind her and Kara turns, squints to examine it. She brightens, bounces in place, grabs at Lena’s arm with both hands. 

“Look at that!” she grins. “That’s so _cool_! It’s, it’s like in the movies, Lena, this is _so_ cool! Is that with a polaroid?” She turns to Hugo to check and when he nods, she beams at Lena. “I _love_ polaroids. This is the coolest thing ever, thank you so much!”

“I’m glad,” Lena laughs. 

Hugo frowns at Kara before shrugging and jotting down her order. Apparently he came to the decision that she can gorge herself on two of the monster burgers so long as she pays. He turns to Lena. 

“One of the chicken burgers, please. Extra on the jalapeño sauce. And fries.”

Hugo grunts, leaves to talk to his cook. 

Kara sucks her bottom lip into her mouth, narrows her eyes. 

“Kara? What is it?”

“Hmm?”

“You look worried.”

“No, I’m-” Kara shakes her head. “I’m just thinking. Excuse me?” She calls after Hugo, waves to get his attention. “Hi, can I, may I please have extra jalapeño sauce on one of mine too? Thank you!”

He nods, clearly realising there’s no point in arguing. 

Lena lets Kara choose their table. She picks a booth far in the back and waves at Hugo until he nods that he knows where they are. Kara throws herself into one side of the table and sits—sweater sleeves pushed up around her elbows, tucking and re-tucking wisps of hair behind her ears, and a flushed, happy look around her cheeks and eyes. The cushions of the booth are green, white where the plastic has peeled away, and there’s a backdrop of red brick and Lena wishes this was everything Jess had implied it was and more. 

Wishes it was the fifteenth in a row of their dates so she _could_ kiss Kara back against the cushioned booth until it creaks, until Kara’s smile splits sweet against her lips and teeth. 

Lena licks her lips. “Are you certain you can eat two of those?” she asks, and folds her arms against the edge of the table so she can’t lean too far toward Kara.

Kara, who rolls her eyes, flicks a dismissive hand. 

“Please. Piece of pie.”

“Cake.”

“Where?” Kara cranes her neck around, whips back around to face Lena when she laughs. “No cake?”

“The phrase. It’s _a piece of cake_.”

“Oh.” Kara frowns, leans back into her chair. “Good to know. I mean, I do _know_ it,” she tells her, “but English is, like, my fifteenth language so sometimes I slip up.”

Lena had plucked the number fifteen from nowhere in particular for her fantasy and for Kara to repeat it makes her flush red around the collar. She swallows, clicks and re-clicks her purse beside her. 

“So many?”

“I’m good with languages.” Kara flags down one of Hugo’s waitresses. “Could we get a share of fries while we wait? Thank you!” She waits until she’s gone before turning back to Lena. “There’s my native tongue, obviously. And then three more. I visited some places with my father and he thought it was a good idea to have a solid, um, to be fluent? Before going somewhere unfamiliar.”

“A smart man.”

“He was,” Kara agrees. She wipes her hands on her jeans, tucks wisps of hair behind her ears. When Lena goes to speak, to apologise, Kara shakes her head with a nothing smile. “Don’t. Don’t worry about it.”

Lena nods. 

“Um.” Kara’s eyes dart away and she frowns for a second when she observes the curve of the booth, realises they could be sitting _next_ to each other. She slides around the corner of the table and Lena allows herself to be manipulated—with a single bat of Kara’s lashes—to slide over too, until they’re sitting together, right up next to one another, knees knocking gently. 

“So, um, those four languages,” Kara continues as though they hadn’t stopped. “And then I came here and I learned English and Hebrew and Arabic and Latin and Greek, modern and ancient for all of them, and German and French.” She makes a slight face, fiddles with her water glass. “I took up Cantonese as one of my courses in university once I learned that they were all, you know, Western languages. European. And then Mandarin under Eliza’s name, I did that by correspondence. And Hindi and Punjabi I’ve been, uh,” she lifts her glass to drink, mostly covering her mouth and her quiet words, ducks a shy look Lena’s way. “Uh, _travelling_ to learn them.”

“You fly to somewhere in India to learn another language?”

“A few times a month, yeah.” 

Lena stares at her for a moment. Kara grins. Lena’s eyes dip down to her lips and, though she’s known for weeks now that Kara is— _Supergirl_ , she thinks, and another part of her just thinks _alien_ —Kara is who she is, it hadn’t really occurred to her that she’s so very different. 

Other than the obvious. The strength and the flying and the laser eyes, and so forth. 

“I have a question,” Lena tells her. 

Kara spreads her arms wide. “I am at your disposal.”

“When you say that you’re good with languages, do you mean _you_ are good with languages? Or your people are?”

“Were.”

Lena freezes solid at the reminder and the tight way Kara’s mouth pinches at the edges. She doesn’t notice at first when Hugo arrives, only when Kara looks away to smile up at him and she pats the space in front of her. He sets the two monster burgers down. 

“Bathrooms that way.” He jerks his head toward the back hallway and Kara nods, though she looks confused. “And yours is on its way,” he tells Lena, who thanks him. “Timer starts when you take your first bite. Ready?”

Kara takes a moment to make sure everything is just right—rolls up her sleeves carefully, though Lena can see that she’s already dragged one cuff through the ketchup, and she turns the plate around to examine every side of it, adjusts it and the napkin box and her cutlery until everything sits at its correct place particular to her. Finally, she nods and slices into the burger.

Hugo taps a button on his phone and Lena taps hers as well, just to be safe. 

She sets it out on the table so he can see it because if Kara is going to attempt this, she’s going to make sure that no one cheats her out of her only _slightly_ hard earned spot on the wall of fame. 

“I’m good with languages, my people were good too,” Kara says. “Now can I ask you something?”

Lena nods. Offers Kara a napkin, which she uses to scoop up the sauce on her chin. 

“Thank you. Why would I need the bathroom?”

“Ah. In case you need to throw up, I think.”

Kara frowns so severely she recoils back an inch. “Why would I need to do that?”

“Because you ordered a burger most people can’t eat and you intend to follow it up with a second one.”

“Oh.” Kara looks down at it, already half eaten. She glances from the segment in her hands to Lena, suddenly shy, and when she bites into the burger she does so delicately. Tries very neatly not to get sauce down her chin. 

She fails almost instantly but Lena doesn’t have the heart to tell her that. 

Pressing her lips together in an effort to fight her smile, Lena says, “I have seen you eat before, you know. And I know you want to win this.”

“I _really_ do,” Kara grins. With that explicit permission, Kara digs in. She’s three quarters of the way through it when Lena’s arrives—Lena, who eats at a far more sedate pace because she’s not on a timer. She does remember to tap the pause button when Kara leans back against the cushioned seat and pats her belly. “How’d I do?”

“Eleven minutes and three seconds.” Kara lets out a little cheer, holds up both hands above her head. “Congratulations!” Lena offers her a victory fry—Kara opens her mouth but doesn’t move any closer and Lena obligingly drops it into her mouth. 

She makes sure to keep her fingers far away from Kara’s lips. 

Licks the salt off her thumb slowly, consideringly. Kara’s half dozing and not paying attention and Lena takes advantage of the moment to eye those red lips, full and plump and—Kara licks at them, flicks her tongue against the corner of her lips to catch a drop of sauce. She opens her lidded eyes when Lena coughs. 

“You okay?”

“Absolutely. Parched,” she excuses herself and reaches for her water. She takes several long draughts from her glass and, when she looks back, Kara is still watching her. She looks well satisfied, hands limp one at her side, one over her belly, and her eyes look faintly dreamy. “Giving up?” Lena asks, tilts her head toward the second burger. 

“No. I’m allowed a break, aren’t I?”

“Certainly.” Lena chomps a fry in half. She gives Kara a lazy smile, sharp at the edges. “If you’re not able to do it.”

“Are you _taunting_ me?” Kara sits up slowly. She narrows her eyes at Lena, who demurs quietly, looks at Kara from under her lashes. 

Dabbing a napkin at the sides of her mouth—cloth napkin or paper, it’s just good manners—Lena relaxes into her seat, shrugs her shoulders. She folds her napkin into one hand and, with the other, traces it meanderingly in the wet rings her glass has left on the tabletop. 

“There’s no shame in not being able to do it, why would I taunt you?” she says, raises her shoulders in the most modest of shrugs. 

“You _are_ taunting me.”

“No, no, no, you’ve already proven yourself.” Lena waves a hand to the empty platter, a stray line of sauce all that remains. Lena drags her thumb across that line of sauce, sucks it into her mouth. Her lips curl at the edges when she notices how Kara stares. “I understand if a second would be too much. If you couldn’t _handle_ something like that,”

“Oh I can handle it!”

“I’m sure,” Lena agrees. 

“I really _was_ just resting!” Kara pulls the second burger in front of her. She stares down at it for a long moment before telling Lena quietly,“The second one looks a lot bigger.”

She sounds so morose that Lena has to stifle a laugh. “You don’t have to eat it.”

“I know. Only problem is, it’s delicious.” Kara takes a fortifying breath and nods. “Timer ready?” She waves to Hugo—who drags his enormous hand down his face and nods, clicks the timer over fresh—and gives Lena an expectant look, Lena who poises her finger over her phone and taps when Kara takes her first bite.

“Only five minutes left,” she tells Kara soon, eyes flicking between her phone and her friend. “…Are you sweating?”

“I’m _so_ full.” The words come out with some measure of difficulty around a mouthful. Kara presses a hand over her lips, swallows hard. “Oh _Rao_ , help me please.” She lays both hands on her stomach, groans. 

“Sit up straight. It’ll lengthen your oesophagus and you can shove more into it.”

Kara squints over at her. “Is that a good idea?”

“No.” Lena props her chin on her hand, smirks across at her. “But it can’t kill _you_ , and you might just beat this second burger.”

“I _do_ want to win.” Kara accepts Lena’s free hand, pulls herself gently upright. She tilts her chin up and sucks in another great breath, groans. “Bad idea.”

“Only a few bites left.”

Kara groans again, stares up at the ceiling. 

Lena stares at her long neck, at the knobs of her collar. True, she’s in the middle of devouring her _second_ burger, but nonetheless the urge to bite all the way up at that perfect neck has only faded a little. 

“Right.” Lena rips her eyes away, fiddles with her cutlery. “How much longer?”

“Three minutes.”

Kara fixes her eyes firmly on her challenge. Lena looks from her—and the unnaturally cute crinkle in the middle of her forehead, and the intent look in her eyes Lena wouldn’t mind if it were turned on _her_ especially in the context of _devouring_ —to her phone timer. 

“Two and—”

“ _Don’t_ ,” Kara puffs. Lena lifts her hands in surrender, tries not to let her smirk grow too obvious. “I’m almost gonna burst,” she moans, but she pops the last mouthful away and she points to Lena’s drink, which Lena obligingly pushes toward her. She drinks it all down and sinks below the table to lay back on the bench, whining her misery. 

Lena reaches for a fistful of napkins, drops them on Kara’s face. “Are you alive?” she asks, turning her glass around and running a finger very lightly over the glossed lip print Kara left behind. 

Kara groans.

“Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea,” she says, and she does _mean_ it but her doubts are easily chased away when Kara slaps a hand against the table and struggles to sit up. 

“Shut up, this was an _amazing_ idea. For me, anyway. You had to watch and now,” Kara pauses, hand at her chest, “you’ll have to entertain yourself for a bit. While I recover.”

“If you blow your powers because you had to prove you could eat two of them, your sister is going to be furious with me.”

“Pfft,” Kara scoffs, waves the idea away. Then she pauses long enough to make Lena genuinely concerned. “No. I’ll text her. Besides, I’ll be fine. Just gimme a minute.” Her voice sounds slurred, sleepy, and she rearranges herself so she’s slumping against Lena instead—heavy and long, leg pressed along the whole length of hers, and _hot_ —and Lena sits perfectly still. 

“Food coma?” Hugo asks when he comes by. His disbelief is still there but now he looks friendly too and very, very amused. 

“Just a small one. Dinner was wonderful.” Lena hands over her credit card with the bill and he takes it, looks from her to Kara. “Thank you,” she says, a little stiff under the scrutiny, and he nods, steps away. 

He returns almost immediately with the camera, hands back her card at the same time. “It’s a nice photo op, that’s all. What do you say?”

“I—” Lena feels her breath seize, Kara heavy on one side and the side of the booth on her other and this man watching the both of them. 

“One for keeps,” he says. More gently than she thought a man of his size was able to sound. “Not for the wall.”

“Oh, well, I suppose.” Lena looks to Kara, her eyes lidded and a dopey smile curling her red lips, and the dot of sauce on her sweater, and—

The camera clicks and Lena turns sharply to find him already gone, the small square sitting where he had been standing. She takes it up in her hand, drags her thumb over the corners of the photo. The film is still murky, milky white, swirls of colour appearing with every passing second. 

Kara’s eyes flutter. 

Lena slips the photo into her purse, clicks it shut. 

“Photo of the champ?” Hugo asks, and Kara lifts her head when Lena nudges her. “Photo?” he repeats and Kara smacks her lips, nods. 

“Here, let me get out of the way,” Lena mutters, nudges Kara hard in the side so she moves away—making her turn green for a moment. She hurries out her side of the booth and tries hard not the laugh at the wounded look Kara turns on her. 

She ignores the flash of fear the look sends through her—that all she’s good for is hurting, that all _they_ , Kara and her like, are good for is to be hunted, that everything between the two of them will carry this heaviness in some way even if it is only her own fear—and she redirects Kara’s gaze to the camera. The second Kara sees it, she lights up and grins, big and bright. 

“Welcome,” Hugo grunts, clicking the button, “to the wall of fame.”

He hands the photo over to Kara, points her to the wall and tells her she can choose where they pin it. Kara hops from the booth like she’d never been dozing at all, never been cradling a _considerable_ food baby, and Lena feels queasy just watching her go. 

“She sure is somethin’,” Hugo tells Lena. She nods dazedly. “In a good way.”

“The best ways,” she agrees, and as soon as she says it distrust needles in her chest. “Thank you for dinner, and for the photos,” she says with a proper smile. She packs up Kara’s things with her own and joins Kara at the wall of fame. The restaurant is beginning to feel boxed in—the lack of windows is getting to her, and the beer-stale air, and there’s no smoking but the general atmosphere feels like a cloud of the stuff rising to the ceiling. She gives Kara a strained smile when she steps up next to her and Kara is too sharp-eyed, and too attentive to miss it. 

“Here,” Kara announces, and pushes the photo blinding onto the wall, not caring where it ends up if Lena is looking at her like that. 

Which won’t do at all. Kara worked very hard for the place of pride. 

Lena fixes it, lifts Kara’s hand a little higher and sits her smack in the middle of the four other photos. Two ill looking men are pinned on one side of a little fancy plaque reading _Wall of Fame_. And on the other side are pinned two ill _and_ triumphant looking men. And Kara who ate _two_ looks no worse for wear at all, smiling so brightly Lena finds it hard to look away. 

She takes a quick photo with her phone—two of them, one of the polaroid alone, one of the whole wall—and then allows Kara to take her from the bar. 

“Are you alright?” 

“Fine, fine,” Lena assures her, and she does feel better the moment they step out into the cool night air. Kara nods, happy with that answer, and she shoves her hands into her pockets. 

“I’m glad. I wouldn’t want to think spending time with me would make you sick.”

“ _No_ , of _course_ not,” Lena hurries to say, and then she narrows her eyes. “Are you teasing me?”

Kara grins and shrugs her shoulders the tiniest bit, looking for all the world like, like…like a _cad_. That’s the only word Lena can come up with. A terribly good looking, blue-eyed _cad_. She turns to strut away and promptly falls over the curb. 

“I’m good! I’m okay!” She bounces upright, wipes her palms on her pants.

“That’s the quickest I’ve ever seen a hero take their tragic downfall.”

“Tragic downfall?” Kara jumps lightly back to her side, offers her elbow to Lena. She slips her hand into the crook of that arm and walks at her side. “You didn’t think it was cute?”

“You fell into the gutter.”

“Maybe I did it on purpose. To make you laugh.”

“Or _maybe_ ,” Lena drawls, and Kara throws her head back and groans, knowing whatever Lena is going to say will be as cutting as it is amused, “you thought you were _so_ funny and weren’t looking where you were going. Hubris.”

“Overweening pride.” Kara walks silently with her for a time. “You’re not the first to accuse me of that.”

“Who else said it? I could have them killed. What?” Lena’s lips curl at Kara’s horrified look. “I _am_ a Luthor.”

“That won’t be necessary. Thank you for the offer?”

“You’re welcome,” Lena laughs. 

“And,” Kara continues, voice dipping low, quiet. Private, Lena would dare to suggest. “Thank you for tonight. I had a lot of fun and I was,” she frowns.

“Yes?”

“I don’t know. I just can’t believe that you went out of your way to find that place for me. It was…” She tilts her head, a smile spreading over her lips when she finds the word she’s looking for. “Perfect. It really was. I hope it wasn’t too gross for you, though.”

“No,” Lena laughs. “I knew what I was getting into. I’ve seen you around potstickers, you remember. Oh, there’s a puddle.” She presses her hand to Kara’s waist to nudge her to the side, but Kara just looks over her shoulder quickly before wrapping an arm around Lena’s wrist and stepping them both up into the air, just enough to avoid the puddle. Lena clutches to Kara’s wrist, wide-eyed. “That’s _one_ way to do it,” she says breathlessly. And, after a second, “You know, this all makes more sense now that I know who you are.”

“What do you mean?”

“The food thing.”

“Oh. The _food_ thing—is it so obvious?” Kara asks, a hint of a whine in her tone. She hangs her head when Lena just smirks. “Winn said that too. _Lucy_ said it explained the whole me zoning out and disappearing when weird stuff was happening thing more than the food thing, because some people need to eat a lot. Metabolism issues and all that. And Alex agreed with her because she said that guys—men, not people in plural, guys as in men—aren’t used to women eating around them in general. And because she thinks Lucy is so _smart,_ ” Kara grins, slides her eyes sideways and her tone dips teasingly, “and _pretty_ and _cool_ and _very attractive_ in her director position.”

Lena shivers at Kara’s tone. “Oh?” she questions, very lightly. 

“I have to listen to this after every meeting,” Kara tells her, not seeming to notice her affect on Lena. Her fingers stroke lightly over the fabric at Lena’s hip before she lets Lena go entirely, hurries to the neatest wall. She leans against it, props one foot back against the wall, looking very disaffected and cool—Lena wonders how that could _possibly_ be, given that she’s still in everything soft, still has sauce on her sweater, and yet there is the proof right in front of her that it’s possible. Kara fumbles with her hands for a bit until she crosses them over her chest, frowns seriously. “She’s a wonderful co-director, Kara,” she mimics, in a startlingly good impression of her sister. “And a wonderful leader in general. She could lead me anywhere and I’d follow. Into the sparring room, into the battlefield." She looks over at Lena, eyes hooded. She bites her lip. "Into the bedroom.”

“Kara!” Lena laughs and it makes Kara break character, grinning. “She _didn’t_ say that.”

“Not in those words,” she concedes and pushes away from the wall with a shrug. They stroll on further down the road. “But I’m her sister, I know what she means. When she talks about how inspiring she is, she means she _watches_ her. Likes to watch her talking. And walking up and down the briefing room. She’s very _fit_ , apparently.” Kara’s eyes slip, skim down Lena’s figure, and she can’t help but wonder if it’s _real_ or if she’s just acting out her story. 

When Kara meets her eyes, flushes, and trips again…Lena lets herself hope. 

“Um.” Kara runs a hand over her hair, pops up like she had intended for that to happen all along. She lucks into a change of topic when she spots the ice-cream stall a short way down the street, and she tugs Lena down the street toward it. 

“Aren’t you full?”

“Umm.” Kara pats her belly. “Yes. But ice-cream doesn’t count—it melts into all the free space in your stomach.” Lena thinks about pointing out that she doesn’t think that’s exactly how it works, but Kara turns big bright blue eyes on her and Lena hasn’t a hope in the world of changing her mind. 

“Chocolate for me.”

“ _Yes_ ,” Kara crows, and she jogs ahead to stand in the line. 

Lena doesn’t miss the way she fumbles with her wallet, pulls out a few bills too many, and the ice-cream mans venture down the road to hand out apparently ‘free’ popsicles to a group of teens down at the corner. 

She jogs back to Lena’s side, hands over the chocolate. 

They eat ice-cream and take the long route back to Lena’s apartment, through one of the city’s parks. Kara somehow gets her vanilla on her nose _and_ forehead. Lena says nothing about it, just takes several photos that have Kara smiling happily and completely unaware of her new food accessories. 

Kara’s knuckles graze against the back of Lena’s hand when they stop outside her apartment building and she pulls away quickly, flushing. The stick of her popsicle snaps where she’s been worrying it between her teeth and she turns away, coughs it out into her other hand. 

“Um, gross, wow. Um.”

Lena turns away a little to hide her smile. 

“Thank you for dinner tonight,” Kara says when she turns back. “I had a really good time.”

Lena considers inviting her up—she has wine, which they can both drink and not worry about getting drunk, either of them. But there’s a doorman right behind her, and a bronze doorknocker or gilded maybe, and crisp marble floors and everything in her apartment is a combination of sleek lines and expensive materials— _illegal_ materials for the sake of finery, Lena is fairly sure, because she’s seen hints of ivory that makes her itch to make a donation to some wildlife conservation place. Or all of them. Her place is so much everything Lillian has always picked out that Lena can’t bear to have Kara up there, doesn’t want her to see all _that_. 

“You’re welcome,” Lena nods. But that doesn’t sound right. “It was—I had fun too.” She _did_ have fun, she knew that, but it’s been a while since she’s had occasion to _say_ it. She smiles, has to look away yet again to contain a little of the feeling. “We could do it again sometime.”

Kara frowns the tiniest bit, repeats her words silently. “We _should_ do it again sometimes,” she says. Or perhaps she’s correcting her, Lena isn’t quite sure. 

Lena nods. “We should.” She looks back over her shoulder to the door, and the doorman. “I…have work tomorrow.” Kara nods. “You can text me if you need an interview or if something happens. And you’re always welcome to come by.” Kara nods again. Lena twists in place, hesitates, but settles on a quiet, “Goodnight then,” and Kara’s answering smile is wide, and crinkling, and _warm_. 

She walks Lena right to the door, only leaves once she sees her step onto the elevator inside. 

Lena’s feet are aching in her small heels but she doesn’t take them off until she’s safely inside her own apartment, door closed. She leaves them at the door, her bag too. The only thing she takes with her is the photo from her purse. It’s fully developed now and she stares down at it, pulls the pins from her hair and drops them into the hallway table. 

She pads into the kitchen, pours a finger of whiskey, and braces herself against the granite countertop. 

She drops the photo down onto the counter, leans over it. In it, Kara is leaning against her side. They look comfortable with each other—close, affectionate—and uncomfortable in the most _normal_ way. Lena’s elbow slipping on the table, Kara’s neck crooked where she leans against her. 

Want sits heavy on her tongue—she washes it down with whiskey, sip by sip, pretends to savour it because that’s what she’s been told to do and it’s one thing to betray her mother and quite another to just drop _everything_ her parents ever taught her. 

_Savour the drink, Lena_ , is a lesson her father was particularly fond of. 

She remembers being too small for the armchair he sat her in—all leather, silver studs marching down the arms cool to the touch—and having to sit heavy still for fear of slipping off. Or marking it. Very different from peeling, creaking bar room booths. 

_Hold your drink,_ was another lesson. 

On the nights when schmoozing and smiling is required—one business meeting after another—it’s not a poor talent to have, but on nights like this one she’s just annoyed. It takes too much time and too much good whiskey to get her drunk. 

She pours another drink. One finger? Two?

The women in the photo aren’t enemies, not even a hint of antagonism. They’re just two women. Full, content, happy. And maybe Hugo is a master photographer or maybe Lena is reading far too much into it, but she’s turned toward Kara and Kara is leaning into her and all Lena can see is that the bar light has softened her. Her own smile softens her. 

Lena stares down at herself—so _soft_ —and at Kara until the colours blur. 

The whiskey burns nicely just as it’s supposed to.

And Lena is sharp—not soft, never _soft_ —just as _she_ is supposed to be. 

She swallows the last of her drink, drags her fingers over the cool edge of her glass. Lena takes up the photo and folds it in two. Slips her fingers over the bend of it once, twice, to make sure the fold takes. And then she makes her way slowly back to her purse and takes the photo behind all her cards, into the holder she never uses and never looks at. 

“What am I doing?” She leans back against the wall, tilts her chin up until the tight feeling in her throat eases a little. “What the hell am I doing?”

* * *

She presses her nose against the cool glass, hands flat on the pane.

“What do you get for someone who could buy half the world if she wanted to?” she mutters, breath fanning out warm against the glass, misting it up. 

Alex glances at the pile of what Kara would generously call antiques. Alex has already called it _trash_. Several times. 

“Not that.”

“Helpful.”

“Anytime.” Alex rolls her head on her neck, stretching it out. “Why are we doing this again? Is it her birthday or something?”

“No. Or, probably not.” Kara pushes away, allows a relieved Alex to drag her away from the store front. She turns her scowl on the pavement and strolls—dejectedly—arm in arm with her sister. 

“We could visit the gun shop.”

“What? No.”

“Why not? We already know that she can shoot.”

“I’m not,” Kara glances around, half certain that anyone nearby could be a paparazzi _spy_. “ _I’m not buying Lena a gun_ ,” she hisses. 

“It could be a ladies gun. Small, compact. Engrave something on the bottom of it like ‘can probably shoot dead anything but SG’. S G because it has to be a short engraving.”

“It's certainly catchy.”

“Right?”

“But no.”

“Boring.” Alex rolls her eyes. “But seriously, why get her a present?”

“She’s just been so busy with _work_ and some _project_ ,” Kara heaves a dejected sigh. “International meetings. All this boring work stuff that goes until like three in the morning.” She blows a strand of hair out of her face with a huff. “Anyway, I don’t know. I thought it might be nice to get her something.”

Alex frowns. “I’ve got it.” She holds off saying anything until Kara is hanging off her in anticipation and then she says, “Wine.”

Kara groans, drags her feet a little. “ _No_ , Alex.”

“Ah. Whiskey then.”

“Alex, no! I want to get her something _fun._ ” She ignores her sister with practised ease when she tries to insist that alcohol is fun. “Something nice, something that will make her happy. She’s been working really hard lately, plus there was that murder scare last week.” Kara softens, looks off toward Lena’s building. It’s some streets away but still. “She deserves something nice.”

“Something that doesn’t remind her of murder, you mean,” Alex acknowledges. She rubs her shoulder where their last big bad had bashed her into a wall. It’s still purpling and hurts to lift over her head and she prods at it tenderly until Kara entangles their fingers and pulls her hand away. “Okay, well, what does Lena like?”

They walk in silence for a while and Alex grins wider the longer the silence persists.

“Do you _know_ what she likes?”

“Shut up, of course I do!” Kara shoves Alex sideways in a perfected half step, lurches with her, and the both laugh a little. After throwing a never-forgotten look over their shoulder, just to be one hundred per cent sure that their mother isn’t giving them a glare. Sure, Eliza might be in Midvale but one never knows for sure. 

She _might_ be. 

“She likes science,” Kara says. Then stops, a little baffled. “Um.”

“Oh my god, you’re as clueless as I am.”

“Oh sure,” Kara teases. “Lucy likes…guns?” she mimics. 

Alex narrows her eyes. “Lucy _does_ like guns. Interesting that you would use her as an example, though.”

“Why interesting? You two are _friends_ , right?” She glances sideways at her sister, who is too busy staring straight ahead to notice. As straight as she can. 

“Right.”

“Right.” Kara bites down on her lip to keep from laughing, glances into the shop windows as they pass. “Okay,” she says, swallowing down bubbles of laughter. “Um. Lena likes working?”

“Clothes too. Good clothes. _Great_ heels.”

“Bags.”

“No way you can afford those, though.”

“True,” Kara nods, morose. One side of her lips quirk up in a smile, her little _I’m so funny_ smile Alex hates. (Adores.) “Not being accused of being evil.”

Alex _snorts_ , winces at the way her shoulder jolts. “That’s a big one,” she laughs. It’s her turn to nudge Kara, who falls the appropriate half step to the side, grinning. They both laugh at Kara’s joke—even though it’s not really a laughing matter. But better to laugh than think about how genuinely crushing that would be. “What about inviting her to games night? Or movie night? So she can kick it with some heroes now that she knows all about, y’know,” Alex lifts her eyebrows. “The hero stuff.”

She lets none of her apprehension about _that_ show on her face, or in her tone. 

“Aw, heroes.”

“I meant _me_.”

Kara beams. “I did too,” she tells her, which makes Alex grumble and roll her eyes. “My big sister, the DEO hero.”

“Alright, alright,”

“I thought about it too. But she has been _really_ busy with work and I don’t want her to feel weird about having to choose.” By the end of the sentence, Kara’s smile has shifted into something a little disappointed and she sighs, kicks at the pavement.

She hurries Alex on down the path when her foot digs a gouge in the concrete. 

“I saw that.”

“Saw what?” Kara smiles innocently, spins them both around when Alex jokingly turns to look at the damage Kara caused. 

“Just add it to the city property damage. What’s it at now—twenty? Fifty million dollars?” Kara ignores her in favour of starting into the store they’ve ended up in front of. Alex continues on for a while—“I heard they’ve started selling Supergirl insurance packages. New wave of white collar crime with people disposing of stuff and saying she destroying it. And—what now?”

Kara points.

“No.”

“ _Yes_ ,” Kara counters.

“Kara, c’mon. No.”

“Why not? Everyone loves cookies.” Kara bounces in place, then forward to press herself covetously against the bakery window. She slides down the glass, crouching to get a better look at the stand of macaroons in the corner and she _groans_ when the door opens and gets a good whiff of that sugar-sweet baking smell. “Alex, it’s fate.”

“You want to buy Lena cookies?”

“Ye—no.” Kara jumps up with a squeal. “We should _make_ her cookies!”

“No.”

“Alex.”

“ _No_.”

“ _Alex_ ,” Kara pouts, clutches at her sleeve. “Please, please, plea—”

“No, no, _no_ ,” Alex shoots back. “You can’t cook, which means that _I’m_ going to have to make them. And did you forget that I’m kind of a big deal at a,” she leans in, lowers her voice to a hiss, “ _certain secret agent facility?”_

Grinning ear to ear—which makes Alex nervous, it truly does—Kara leans in too. “ _Alex_ ,” she hisses, delighted, “ _it’s your day off_.”

Alex lifts a hand to press hard against her forehead, covering her eyes. She mutters something that makes Kara lean in, nearly vibrating with excitement. 

“What was that?”

“You heard me, I said _fine_.” She grins, a little sharp. “Actually, technically I said it’s forced leave because I was _heroically_ injured,” she lifts her hurt shoulder and despite how it’s said, it still makes Kara’s eyes sad for a moment. “But _fine_. There are rules.” Kara groans. “First, you’re forbidden from touching the cart.”

“Unfair! I can control myself—”

Alex cuts off that argument with just a lift of her eyebrows. “ _Second_. If I make these cookies for you, I get to pick the movie for sister night.”

“Deal.”

“I’m not done,” she continues, really getting into the swing of this leverage thing. She slings an arm around Kara’s shoulders, which sink when she realises Alex isn’t going to stop until she’s taken Kara for everything she has. “Third, you have to mix the bowl.”

“Duh, you’re injured.”

“And four, if you can’t reach something on the shelf, what do we do?” Kara huffs—Alex stops dead and crosses her arms. “What do we do?” she repeats, voice stern.

“We ask for help, we don’t fly to get it, I _know_ , I _know_. Come on, Alex, I know the rules, just,” she jerks her head toward the store. “Let’s go!” 

She stops barely short of pulling Alex over her shoulder in a fireman’s lift—just _barely_ —and when they’re inside, she drops Alex’s arm in favour of moving quickly from shelf to shelf, pulling everything they need into her arms. 

“Too fast, Kara.”

The quiet words make her freeze, one foot off the floor. Kara looks sheepishly back over her shoulder. “Sorry?”

“Mhm.” Alex picks up one flour, looks from it to the one next to it. “Hey, is Lena allergic to anything?”

“Uh…”

“Honestly. _Clueless_.”

“Shut up.” Kara drops the chocolate chips she’s plucked from the top shelf into the cart—“I _jumped_ , Alex, I didn’t _fly_. Technically”—and pulls her phone from her back pocket. 

— _hi lena  
_ _—quick question  
_ _—are u allergic to anything????  
_ — _don’t ask me why_

“Wikipedia says she’s allergic to almonds,” Alex tells her absently, scrolling through her phone. She drops the nicer flour brand into the cart, tosses the chocolate chips back to Kara. “Also, we’re making sugar cookies so you can put these back.”

“We can eat them on their own.”

“Or you could put them back.”

“Or _I_ can eat them,” Kara tries again, and Alex finally lifts her eyes from her phone. But not to smile and nod and tell her what a brilliant idea that is. Kara huffs. “ _Fine_.” She returns them to a lower shelf, not wanting to break Alex’s ‘no flying’ rule again, and wanders down the aisle to stand in front of the sugars. “We need frosting.”

“Lots of it,” Alex agrees.

“Do we make our own, or…?”

“Can we?”

“It can’t be _that_ hard. I’ve watched, like, twenty seasons of Cake Boss and that Great British Bakeoff.” Someones phone buzzes. “Is that yours?”

“Might take a while. I think that’s your phone,” Alex points out when it buzzes again. “I’ll google how long it takes to make frosting.”

“Okay.” Kara pulls her phone out again. 

— _almonds  
_ — _apologies for disobeying but…why? should I be concerned?_

Kara grins down at her screen, starts typing out her response. She feels her her sister’s gaze prickling at her skin. “What, Alex?”

“What?”

“You’re staring at me.”

Alex doesn’t deny it, just gives an airy kind of hum. “Hey, what’s Lena’s name in your phone?”

Kara looks up, a small frown crinkling between her eyebrows. “Huh?”

“Lena’s contact name. In your phone. What it is?”

“It’s…Lena,” she tells her, confused.

“And?”

“And a bouquet?”

“Ah.” She nods, gives Kara a long look that makes her insides squirm. It’s a look Kara doesn’t recognise—thoughtful, warm, and amused but with an edge to it that Kara can’t catalogue. “Okay,” she continues, and Kara falters—she wants to know what that look means, what its about—but Alex is moving on. “Google tells me that frosting is quick to make but it takes like eight hours to set on the cookie.”

Shock makes her forget about that look. “Eight _hours_?” Kara grimaces. “No wonder Eliza always got mad when we ate everything so quick.” She tilts her head from side to side, then shrugs. “Lets make it. Get double though so I can try to make it and if I mess it up,” she turns pleading eyes on Alex, who laughs.

“Yes, Kara. If you fuck it up I will fix it.”

“Best. Sister. Ever.”

— _kara?_

Alex watches her for a moment before she nods to Kara’s phone. “You should answer Lena before she thinks someone is trying to kill her with almonds. Also, text Winn to make sure he gets her allergy taken off wikipedia before someone actually tries to do that.”

“Good idea.”

Kara tangles the fingers of her left hand into one of Alex’s belt hoops, texting Lena back and letting her sister pull her around the store. “Thanks for doing this with me on your day off, by the way.”

“Forced leave.”

“Don’t pretend you don’t like hanging out with me. It’ll hurt my feelings. Pink icing,” she points.

Alex grins, takes it from the shelf. “Does Lena even like pink?”

“Does that matter? It all tastes the same.”

“Sure but you know how I always like eating the edge of cakes and mom likes the middle?”

“Weird, but yes.”

“People do that with colour. Like Starbursts.”

“They’re flavoured,” Kara points out.

“Right, _but_ people still have favourites because of colour.”

“Sure,” Kara agrees, but she looks doubtful. 

Alex just shakes her head, plucks every other colour off the shelf as well. Kara grips at her good shoulder and bounces happily. P icks up a small container of sugar _things_ in the shape of tiny stars. 

“What about these? Too on the nose?”

“Yep. Put them in the cart.” 

Kara laughs, takes two more and drops them in. She takes the cart and nearly succeeds in leaving with it but Alex whips out a hand lightning fast and grabs it with a half-laugh, half-yell of _no_!

“I’m not that bad!”

“Tell that to Mister Cross!”

Kara frowns, tilts her head, confused. “Mister Cross?”

“Yeah.” Alex waits, waves her hands impatiently when Kara’s eyes don’t register recognition. “You know, the guy who ran the store back home.”

“Mister _Cross?”_ Kara asks again, laughing. She pulls a frozen pizza from the freezer as they pass. “Alex, his name was Mister _Johnson_. You called him Mister Cross because he was always mad at us.”

Alex wanders down the next aisle for a minute before she shrugs. “Well, anyway, he was cross because you wrecked his store twice.”

“Once.”

“Twice. The first time when all the shelves fell down and you had jam all over your hands,”

“And you made that _stupid_ joke about being caught red handed,”

“I stand by that joke. And the second time when it got flooded, remember?”

“That one was _your_ fault,” Kara reminds her. Then she squeals and _shoves_ ahead of Alex to get to the piping options. “This is amazing, this is like stationery but for _cake_.” She holds up a ten dozen pack of candles. “Who needs this many candles?” She stares at them for a moment longer. “I…I feel like _I_ need this many candles.”

“S-O-S,” Alex mutters, typing into her phone. “Kara…found…icing…send field agents…”

“Is that Winn? Does he know how to do icing?”

“I’ll ask,” she promises, and as her big sister does that, Kara proceeds to touch each and every option on the shelf. 

Alex dumps a small pack of piping nozzles into the cart and a pack of the piping bags and leaves Kara to her careful, fervent examination. She moves toward the cashier and when she gets to the end of the aisle, she stops. 

“Oh.”

Kara whips her head around at her sister’s tone, jumps up to join her. 

“Oh,” she agrees, looking at the masked person levelling a gun at the cashier. “Can’t we have _one_ day off? Ever?”

“Hey!” He’s spotted them, obviously, and he jerks the barrel of the gun toward them. “On the ground!” Gestures the gun toward the tiles and Alex kneels, hands raised, and lowers herself down. He turns the gun on Kara, who copies her sister. 

“ _How does it feel to be one of the regular people?”_ Alex teases, very, very quietly so only Kara can hear her. Kara rolls her eyes. Wants to say something snide back but she can’t do that without him hearing. Also, she can’t think of anything appropriately snide. “ _Can you take him out_?” 

Kara waits until Alex is looking at her and then she nods, very slightly. 

Alex shrugs a shoulder. A _your call_ kind of situation. 

Kara wriggles sideways, out of the cameras line of sight, and when the gunman turns away to threaten the cashier again—a teenager who opens the register with shaking hands and bundles the money into a plastic bag—she’s up in a flash, crumples the gun in one hand and knocks out the would-be thief with the other. 

She’s back at Alex’s side before her sister has time to blink. Before he has time to hit the floor. 

“How was that?”

Alex turns her lips down thoughtfully. “Pretty good.” She accepts Kara’s help getting to her feet and moves away, steps over the gunman. Rolls their cart over his fingers. “Hi,” she greets the cashier and dumps their items out onto the bench. “I’ll take all of this and also,” Alex yanks her badge from her belt, points one finger up at the cameras, “I’m going to need that footage.”

“It’s—we—it’s not a real camera.” His voice breaks twice, maybe from nerves, maybe because he’s just at that age, and when Alex fixes him with a cool stare to determine whether he’s lying to her, he sways like he’s about to faint. 

“We’ll also take this,” Kara adds, dropping the chocolate chips onto their pile. “And these.” She makes deliberate eye contact with her sister as she displays the seven different cookie cutters she’d found _somewhere_ in the last thirty seconds. “Thank you so much.”

Alex rolls her eyes—which makes Kara ball her fist in victory—and turns away to call the police for the poor kid. He can’t be more than sixteen years old and he just stands there and _stares_ down at the gunman. Now handcuffed, courtesy of Alex, but still. Scary. 

“That’s right, the StarMart on—yeah, that’s the one. Also, can you arrest my sister for spending all my money on cookies?”

Kara’s head whips around with a protest on her lips, only to find that Alex had already hung up and is standing there _smirking_ at her. 

“Funny.”

“I thought so.”

Kara huffs. She rips open one of the packets of chocolate and offers the cashier the first handful. 

“Um.”

“Unless your allergic?” she checks, forehead crinkling in worry. 

“No, no I’m not—thanks.” He looks from Kara to Alex, and then down to the gunman, and back to Kara who is leaning against the bench with a very soft, worried expression, and over to Alex again who doesn’t look much of anything other than bored. He stumbles back to sit on a small plastic chair, breathes out a _gust_ of breath, eyes wide. “I almost got robbed. I almost got _robbed—_ did you guys _see_ that?”

“Yep.”

Kara crinkles her nose at Alex. “A little more compassion, maybe?”

“Right.” Alex comes around to where he’s sitting, crouches next to him. “Did he hurt you? Do you feel dizzy, sick, or cold?” He blinks down at her. “I’m a doctor.”

“And a cop?”

“FBI.” His eyes—already wide—widen further. “Did he hurt you?” she repeats, a little more slowly.

“N-no, ma’am. I’m okay. Thanks to Supergirl.” His vaguely unsettled expression shifts into a faint grin. “Supergirl _saved_ me. I almost got robbed but Supergirl saved me!”

“Yeah!” Kara grins. “We saw her too!”

“Sure did.” Alex ducks her head to hide a smile, checks her phone quickly. “Alright, I don’t want you to go into shock. Have you got a jacket?” The boy points to the jacket hanging at the door and Kara pushes away from the bench to fetch it for him, hurries back to drape it around his shoulders. He clutches it closed in one hand and Alex gets his permission to take his pulse and check his forehead and hands to see if he’s clammy or cold or shaking, but he seems fine. Better, after Kara heaves the gunman out of his sight. 

They wait for the cops to arrive and by the time he’s been taken away and they’ve given their statements, Kara is fidgeting. 

Big time. 

Rocking back onto her feels and forward onto the balls of her feet, where she bounces for a moment before rocking back onto her heels again and again. She twists her hands in the rough fabric of the cloth bag and when they’re _finally_ allowed to leave, she nearly jumps through the door.

She tilts her face up the sky as soon as they’re out. 

“What’s got you so antsy today?”

“I don’t know.” Kara’s eyes flutter closed, basking in the sun across her face. “I don’t usually have to stick around for that kind of thing. It takes so _long_ ,” she complains. Alex grins. “Also, I really want cookies.”

“Mm.” Alex glances to her watch. “Well…my apartment is across town. And yours,”

“The oven is still broken.”

“Still? You _need_ to get that fixed.”

“Why?” Kara shrugs. “The takeout places still have functional ovens. Bernoulli’s has wood-fired ones, even.”

“Really?”

“Oh yeah, _really_ good. I got this meat pizza with, like, seven types of cheese.” Kara throws her head back and moans. “ _So_ good.”

Alex points a warning finger toward her. “You’re getting me some of that pizza. But first, the DEO. They’ve got ovens.”

“Yeah but is that allowed?” Kara asks, even as they start off toward the building. “Do you think J’onn will mind?”

“Pfft, no, I’m his favourite.” After a moment, Alex adds, “Besides, Lucy is co-director. And she likes cookies.”

“And you.” Alex doesn’t respond to that, just links her arm around Kara’s and nudges her hard in the side. Kara grins, falls away like she has to unless she wants Alex to break her elbow on her. They fall into sync in three steps.

“I have an important question.” Kara’s voice is quiet and serious as they near the building and Alex nods, looking concerned. “Where is the entrance?”

“What?”

“The entrance. To the DEO. I always fly in the Supergirl door.”

“That actually isn’t your personal entrance,” Alex tries to tell her but Kara just laughs. 

“Right, sure.”

“It isn’t.”

“Sure.”

“ _Seriously_. It’s for drones and light crafts.”

“And for me.”

Alex rolls her eyes. “Do you want to know where the _commoners_ entrance is or not?”

“I do, I do,” Kara laughs. She follows Alex around the corner to a building next to the one Kara knows to be the DEO. They end up in front of a tiny travel agency and she snorts. “Are you serious?”

Alex grins, pushes into the store.

“Cromwell.”

The man at the desk looks up from his computer, gives her a brisk nod back. “Danvers.” His friendly smile fades into awe and when his phone starts to ring, he doesn’t seem to hear it, too fixed on Kara standing behind her. “You—y-you’re,”

“Hi.” Kara waves. “Your phone is ringing.”

Agent Cromwell reaches out, misses twice. When Alex clears her throat loudly, he shakes his head and looks away from Kara to take his phone. “Chip’s Cheap Seats, how can we help you today?”

Behind the reception desk is a door that opens into a small backroom. It’s mostly paper files and rows of identical metal cabinets and Kara follows her sister unhesitatingly into it.

“Chip’s Cheap Seats?” she asks. “That doesn’t sound very safe.”

Alex nods. “And we don’t get a lot of calls.” 

“ _Ah_. Smart. Um.” Kara glances around. “There’s only one door.” Her jaw drops when Alex grins, reaches almost lazily to the side and pulls a drawer open. The room shakes a little as a hidden door grates open, lifts a whole section of the wall—cabinets included—up into the air. 

Kara hurries forward after Alex through the doorway, but behind it is a plain looking room with six desks and six agents. There’s a clucky air-conditioning unit that sounds like a particularly irritating fly, buzzing and droning just above their heads, and there’s a pot of coffee brewing at the far end of the room and it smells particularly pungent but that’s the most interesting thing about it. 

“Morning, agents.”

“Danvers!” The agent at the largest desk stands, walks around her desk to greet her. She’s very short and plump and has a cheerful round face that brightens further when she smiles at Alex, a beam that could almost put Kara’s to shame. “And the young Danvers!” She takes the hand Kara offers, shakes it firmly. “How nice to meet you!”

“Likewise!”

“Just giving her the tour,” Alex explains. “How are the troops, Addie?”

“Oh, chugging along, chugging along,” she tells them. Kara peeks at her desk and quickly finds the small plaque that reads ‘Adelaide Thripps’. 

“Four pots of coffee in,” another agent jokes, one desk over. 

“Chugging along very _quickly_ ,” Adelaide amends, and she laughs at her own joke. “Well. Enjoy the tour, Kara, it was so very nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too!” she tells them, all six of them, and Alex pulls her into the next room. “Exactly how many of these entrance rooms are there?”

Alex just grins.

The next is empty, seemingly, even to Kara’s x-ray vision. The walls are made of a brightly polished silver metal and they stretch up to a very high ceiling. Alex makes sure that she walks directly behind her—so far as to tell her to step where Alex steps, _exactly_ where she steps—and the room following it is nearly identical, except that the walls are blue. 

The room after _that_ is not a room at all, but instead a walkway over a small forested area Kara can’t see the bottom of. And after that, another room like the silver one and the blue one, only this one is entirely made of a wood that clatters loudly underfoot. 

Finally, they come to a room that is actually a hallway and at the end of it is an elevator. 

Alex flashes her badge at the scanner and waits. 

“This is a _weird_ way to get inside,” Kara tells her and Alex shrugs.

It takes a few minutes but finally the elevator reaches them and they step inside. 

“Hold tight.”

“What? Why?” Kara’s fingers clench around the grocery bag handles. 

“Just hold tight,” Alex warns again and she presses the number 32 and then the oddest button that is just an arrow. A _sideways_ arrow and a small D. “Here we go.”

Kara tilts her head, curious, and yelps when the elevator lurches sideways. She stumbles, dents the handlebar with her hip. When she turns to smooth that bump out, the elevator switches gears with a shudder and shoots straight up—intent, apparently, no reaching the thirty-second floor as soon as possible. 

“You do that _every day_?” Kara asks when they reach the part of the DEO she finally recognises. Alex saunters out of the elevator after her, laughs. 

“No. I usually come in through the garage. Don’t forget the bag,” she tells her, and heads for the kitchens. She stops, looks back over her shoulder at her little sister who is staring over at her, dumbstruck. “Are you coming?”

//

Forty minutes later, several reprimands, and a lot of flour later, Alex slams the mixing bowl she confiscated down onto the bench and breathes out in a very calm, controlled fashion. 

“Is it,” she asks, still calm, still controlled, “the vanilla first? Or the eggs?”

“They’re _together_ ,” Kara tells her, also using her inside voice.

Lucy ordered them to. She'd been fielding complaints, apparently. 

“But which is _first_?”

“It doesn’t matter!” She slaps the recipe down onto the bench, smoothes it out. It only rips a little bit. “Beat in the eggs and vanilla together,” she reads out. “That’s what it says! Together!”

“Fine! _Fine!_ ” Alex grabs the recipe, reads it for herself, and she returns to the mixing bowl and slams the eggs against the side of it, cracking them in.

“Do you _want_ to kill Lena? Because leaving eggshells in the bowl is one _unlikely_ but _possible_ way of doing that!” Kara yanks the bowl out of Alex’s hands and fumbles in the drawer for a teaspoon, picks the eggshells very carefully out of the mix.

“Unlikely.”

“But _possible_ ,” Kara repeats, and she returns the bowl to Alex with the tiniest bit of force. 

“Whatever.” Alex snatches up the recipe again, skims through the steps. “This shouldn’t be this hard, I’m a goddamn doctor.”

“Right but this is our _fourth_ attempt and we still can’t get it right.”

“I am here too, Kara! I know how many attempts it’s been!”

Kara lifts her hands in surrender and plops down onto one of the stools, far on the other side of the kitchen. The DEO kitchen is easily ten times the size of her own and that’s a good thing because Alex has almost _murdered_ her twice already—and _okay_ , Kara hasn’t exactly backed down either, she can admit that. To herself anyway. To Alex? Never. 

“Why is this so hard?” She whines, lowers her head to the cool countertop. “Eliza never made it look this hard.” Kara rolls her head to the side, squints over at her sister when she freezes in place. Kara frowns. “What?”

“What?”

“You’re…weird.”

“Gee. Thanks.”

“You know what I meant,” Kara laughs and Alex grins. 

She wipes at the flour on her cheek, drops her hands on to her hips. “I was just thinking,”

“Uh oh.”

“Funny. I was _thinking_ that mom knows how to do this.” Alex lifts her eyebrows at Kara, who rolls her head onto her hand, lazily props it up. She shrugs, uncomprehending, and Alex sighs. “Oh my god. Just call mom.”

“Fine.” She pulls out her phone and flicks through her contacts until she finds Eliza’s number.

“What? You don’t have her on speed dial?”

“I don’t have anyone on speed dial. I have super speed.”

“Not even me?”

“…I have _one_ person on speed dial,” Kara mutters, and Alex laughs. She stops laughing when she tastes the mixture in the bowl and she yelps, spits it out into the sink. 

“Not good,” she tells her sister unnecessarily. Kara wanders over to taste it anyway. 

“Ugh _gross_.”

“ _Girls?”_

Kara zips back to her phone, leans over it. She keeps her floured hands away from it. “Hi Eliza, it’s Kara!”

“ _I do have caller ID, sweetie. Is everything alright?”_

Kara moves to tap her onto speaker, since Alex can’t hear her like she can. She pauses when flour dusts from her hand onto the counter and moves to use her elbow instead. Alex rescues the phone before she can smash it. 

“Hi mom, everything is fine. We’re making cookies and, um.”

“ _Oh dear_.”

“Yeah.”

“ _Okay, let me call you back in a minute from the landline,”_

“Mom, no,” Alex huffs, rolls her eyes toward Kara who buries her laugh in her hand. Alex points her toward the sink to wash everything off her hand…and face. “Mom, _mom_ , we have plenty of data. Better yet, just hang up so we can FaceTime you and you can see…” She looks around the kitchen. “…Everything.”

“ _Sounds bad._ ”

“You can tell us what we’re doing wrong. I know how much you love doing that.”

“ _Very funny, Alexandra.”_ Kara wipes her hands on a towel, hip checks her sister gently. Alex smiles and Kara knows she _was_ joking. Mostly. “ _If I had to guess, I would say that you’re both very bad at baking_.”

“You’re so funny, mom. We’ll FaceTime.” She ends the call abruptly, takes the mixing bowl to dump everything out into the bin. 

“Alex! I didn’t get to say goodbye!”

“We’re calling her again in a second,”

“You _know_ I need to say goodbye,” Kara grumbles, pulls her phone toward her. She wanders to the far side of the kitchen again just to make sure Alex can’t touch it and she calls Eliza back. “Hi Eliza.”

“ _Hello, Kara.”_

“Goodbye for earlier.” She takes a moment to listen to her adoptive mother—her heartbeat, the way she flicks through a magazine, and Kara populates the image into the backdrop of their home. The too-soft couch in the living room she’s no doubt sitting in with the long bay windows looking out to the beach. The driftwood coffee table, the scent of Eliza’s favourite tea—green tea, Kara remembers she has in the afternoons—and the lazy afternoon light that sifts through the windows and the sunlight and warms the floorboards and carpet. Kara pulls her bottom lip into her mouth, picks at the skin there, and tries to beat back the sudden wave of homesickness. 

“ _Goodbye for earlier_ ,” Eliza says back. She mostly sounds amused, but Kara can pick out the softness, the kind solemnity. She knows that Kara needs to say goodbye. “ _And goodbye again. FaceTime me so I can see how bad this experiment is going._ ”

“It’s actually real baking this time. We’re making cookies for Lena. Bye!”

Kara pulls the phone away from her cheek, fiddles with her phone for a minute and floats around the kitchen looking for the best place for phone-Eliza to sit and dictate their actions. 

“Winn!” she yells. “Winn, do you have a screen we can borrow?” She passes the phone—“Hi Eliza!”—to Alex and trots out into the DEO proper. “Winn? Hi, have you seen Winn?”

The passing agent points back over her shoulder and Kara smiles at them, turns and strides down the hallway.

“Winn?” She peeks into the training room, not expecting to see him in there but there’s only two training rooms and maybe a storage room down this way? She isn’t totally sure. “Winn?”

“In here!” comes his muffled yell. 

Kara opens the door to the storeroom and stops for a moment. The first thing to see is the large suit Kara assumes is the Guardian upgrade. The second, of course, is Winn. He’s in a dark blue jumpsuit, a screwdriver bit between his teeth, and he’s laying flat on his back on a creeper to work on the underside of what looks like a motorbike. But…a really _cool_ motorbike. He’s wearing a pair of goggles that reflect the sparks shooting off it, a little tool whirring away in his hand. 

“What is _that_?” 

“Dude!” Winn plucks the screwdriver from his mouth to whisper-shout at her. “ _Close the door!_ ” He chucks the screwdriver at her and she laughs when it clatters to the floor a full two yards away. But she pulls the door closed obligingly and stoops to collect the screwdriver, brings it back over to him. 

“So this isn’t suspicious at all.”

“Yeah, yeah, I don’t have one hundred per cent permission to be building this. Just,” he rolls out from under the bike, lifts his hands pleadingly. “Be cool, okay?”

“Be cool?” Kara scoffs. “I have ice breath. I’m always cool.” She drops into a crouch, wraps her arms around her knees. “Um…so, are you busy?”

“Nah, almost done. Why? What is it? Something wrong? Another big bad? Is Alex okay?”

“Whoa, yes!” He breathes out in relief, hand pressed to his heart. “We’re baking—”

“Uh oh.”

“Exactly. Anyway, Eliza is going to help out but I need your help getting my FaceTime working on a bigger screen?” He nods immediately and Kara beams at him. She’s content to wait until he’s done, pulling down her glasses so she can scan the bike while he works. She finds she’s thrilled by it—it’s delicate, intricate, and her eye roam over it picking out how it works. “Winn, this is _beautiful_.”

“Yeah, well, toymaker by blood, superhero suit and accessory making good guy by choice.” He grunts, fiddling with a bolt. “Can you hand me the wrench?” Kara hesitates, looking into the tool box open at her side. “Oh, um, it’s,” he cranes his neck to look. “The one with the Batman stickers on it.”

Kara hands it over, plays with the tire iron he has. She flips it over in her hands until Winn makes a small annoyed sound up at the bolt he’s working on.

“Problem?”

“No, just—” Winn grins at her. “Actually, this is great, this is perfect, I can work with this.” He rolls slowly out from under the bike, holding the wrench in place. “Could you tighten this for me?” She takes it from him and carefully pushes at it, watching him closely. When he deems it perfect he throws up a hand to stop her. “Right there!” He pulls himself under again, just to make absolutely sure, and after a second he wheels out again and grins, big and wide, and pops both thumbs up. “ _Perfect._ Okay, great, help me cover this with a tarp and I’ll come fix your screen problem.”

“A tarp? Won’t anyone look under that?”

Winn shrugs, tosses her the opposite end of the sheet. “They haven’t yet.” 

Kara tucks the tarp around her side of the bike and they stand together at the door for a moment, eyeing the obviously bike-shaped object. 

“I think it looks great, very inconspicuous,” she tells him. Winn laughs, peels out of his jumpsuit. “You’ve got a little,” she points to his cheek, scrunches her nose when he swipes at the grease stain with his white shirt cuff. “Gross.”

“You can’t talk, you’re covered in—what is that, flour?”

“Yeah.” She brushes at some on her sweater. “Remember when I fought that fun guy, the blue one?”

“The one that punched you into a mountain and gave you a concussion?”

“That one,” Kara nods. “Baking with Alex is worse than that.”

Winn whistles quietly, impressed. They step out into the hall, close the door again. Winn looks both ways and coughs— _hugely_ inconspicuous—as he does something to the keypad that makes it beep shrilly for ten seconds before it locks.

“Should I put something in front of it? A concrete block?” Kara offers. “I can do that for you.”

“How would I get in?”

“I would lift it again.”

“Tempting, but I think I’ll just talk my way out of it if the bosses ever find out.”

Kara shrugs, obviously a little disappointed. “Alright.” She starts off down the hall and Winn follows, still wiping at the grease mark. “So before we go in there,” she tells him, listening out for her sister, “it might be safest not to talk to her. Or make eye contact. I’ll be fine because,”

“The superpowers,” Winn nods.

“Right. But you’re,”

“More breakable.” He reaches up to clap her on the shoulder. “I’ve got this. I’m an agent now.”

Kara sucks in a deep breath, nods. “Let’s do this.” She steps into the kitchen, stops dead—Winn slams into her back—when she sees Alex laughing down at Kara’s phone and stirring the mixture in the bowl easily. Lucy is on the other side of the counter, dressed in her DEO blacks, and she glances at Winn and Kara when they come in but doesn’t make any other sign that they’re there. “What in the warm heavens is this?”

Winn narrows his eyes. “She looks…at ease.”

“I’m disturbed,” Kara agrees. 

“We should leave,” he suggests quietly and Kara nods. “I don’t think she’s seen us, just…step back very slowly and-”

Alex lifts her eyes to them, ruining that idea. “Hey. I’ve just been telling mom and Lucy about how we’re baking these for _Lena_.”

“I already told her that.” Kara steps in—since they can’t run away, and she _is_ official taste tester so she should be there—and pulls Winn in with her even though he struggles. “I brought Winn. Hi Lucy.” She walks to her—avoiding her sister—and Lucy leans against her side for a second, grinning.

“Hello, Winn,” Eliza smiles from the small phone.

“Doctor Danvers! What’s up?” He turns on the television in the kitchen and, with a few seconds and a wireless keyboard, he has Eliza on the wall. “Zordon, what are your instructions?”

When all three Danvers just _look_ at him, Winn sighs. He turns to Lucy for backup and she gives him an exhausted look. 

“I know. Heathens. Don’t worry, we’re watching it for the next movie night.”

“Thank _god._ ”

“Whoa, we,” Alex points between herself and Kara, “didn’t agree to that.”

“It’s a direct order from your superior,” Lucy tells her and Kara ducks her head to keep from laughing. 

Alex clears her throat. “Um. Okay. Kara,” she clears her throat again. “Mom says the dough is done and the recipe says it needs to sit in the fridge for about an hour.”

“So,” Winn interrupts, “you’re saying we could watch Power Rangers _now_?”

“I’m saying that she can start mixing up the icing, actually.” Alex points him to the stool. “Sit. You get to help.”

“Yay,” he mutters. Alex pretends not to notice when Winn mouths _scary_ to Kara, or the way Kara nods. She also pretends not to be very aware of Lucy coming around the bench to stand right next to her, taking the second mixing bowl with—hopefully—good dough and going with Alex to the fridge. Their fingers graze when Alex takes it from her and the very tips of her ears flush. She clears her throat again, rearranges a few of the tupperware lunches scattered through the fridge to shove the bowl in. 

“So,” she asks, “old school Power Rangers or the new one?”

“Both,” Lucy says immediately. She rests a hip against the counter, crosses her arms. 

“Agreed. Both have merit and get this, Kara, the original power rangers in this new movie were _aliens_.”

Kara pulls her finger from her mouth. “That’s cool,” she says, trying to sound like she’s not talking around a mouthful of icing.

“Are you eating the icing?”

“…No.”

“Some just fell from your mouth,” Lucy tells her. She watches with horrified fascination. “I saw it.”

“You were mistaken.” 

“Right.”

Alex lays a hand on her wrist, pulls her hand quickly away when her fingers brush against Lucy’s shirt. She puts her hand on her own hip instead. “Kara, you can eat that icing, it honestly looks like concrete. And you’re banned from mixing anymore. Winn, you have delicate hands.”

“Thank you?”

“You’re in charge of mixing.”

“I’m being _punished_? For what!”

“Depends,” Lucy jumps in, backing up Alex and pushing the ingredients toward him. “What have you got stashed in that storeroom?”

Winn pulls a clean bowl in front of him. “I love making icing and following orders.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“What, uh,” he looks through the colours. “What colour?”

“All of them. We’re making some gay ass cookies.”

“Gay?” His voice goes up in surprise. Lucy looks like she agrees with him, turning toward Alex with a question in her eyes. “I’m sorry, I thought these were for Lena?” Alex nods. Tilts her head very slightly toward Kara who is focusing on trying to get her mixing spoon out of the concrete icing. When he glances at Kara, Kara moves her eyes slowly to Alex, and Winn wonders if either of them knows the other thinks the gay cookies are for them. “Oh. _Oh_. Oh. Huh.” He looks from Alex’s smug smile to Kara, to Lucy, and back to the packets of colouring. He laughs. “Sure. I’ll help. I’ll need more bowls, though.”

//

Even though the cookies are for Lena—some of them anyway, since they didn’t bother to look at how many cookies one batch made and ended up with two hundred of them—Kara is glad for herself, and Alex and Lucy, and Winn especially, that they’re doing it. 

“I swear to god, if another of my clouds come out looking like a snowman I’m going to _scream_.”

“No, Lucy, you’re doing great, they look perf—Winn! Stop giving Kara my icing!”

“She made me!”

“I just _asked_ him,”

“You have six colours in front of you, I’m sure _one_ of them is right,”

“I needed that one, Alex!’’

“Winn, buddy, you have got to learn to say no to her,”

“I’m a poor orphan boy with a fragile sense of family and a deep need to please people. Don’t make me choose between you.”

Alex narrows her eyes. “ _Winn!_ ”

“Alex says don’t use all the colours!” he yelps, scared by the way she points her finger at him. 

“Kara says come here and use all the colours _with_ me. I'll protect you from her,” Kara offers, and Winn grimaces toward Alex before betraying her, rushing to Kara’s side and taking another bowl with him. 

“Winn!”

“Don’t blame him, Alex, I’m a _superhero_.”

“You’re a super _shit_ that’s what you are.”

“Language, Agent Danvers,” Lucy teases and Kara and Winn watch—and smirk—as Alex turns several shades of red and overturns her bowl of icing with suddenly clumsy hands. “Okay so show me again how you get your clouds to look like that?”

Winn nudges Kara, tilts his head very visibly toward the pair. Alex rests her hand on Lucy’s, slowly moves her through it. They avert their eyes when Lucy steps a little closer. 

“What is going on here?”

Alex jumps away from Lucy—icing splatters over the counter at the shock—and she reaches for her absent gun instantly. Lucy does too, but it’s just J’onn standing in the doorway to the kitchen. 

Kara waves. J’onn nods to her.

“Sir,” Alex clears her throat. 

Winn raises his hand. “Before I get fired or whatever, you should know that I was forced into doing this.” Kara rolls her eyes. J’onn looks very convinced, given that Winn looks the happiest he’s ever looked. There’s a dot of icing at the corner of his mouth and more splattered over his hands, and he’s standing shoulder to shoulder with Kara.

“Director Lane?”

“Officially?” she grins. “Team bonding.”

J’onn looks around the kitchen again—at the two dozen bowls they’re using, and the racks and racks of cooling cookies, and the mess in the sink—and he unfolds his arms, sighs. “Carry on. But do _not_ leave this for the janitorial team to clean up. Understood?”

“Sir yes sir!” Kara salutes and in half a minute most of the dishes are sparkling clean in the drying rack. “Would you like to make some with us?”

“No, thank you.” He takes a few steps in, examines their creations. He wavers for a moment before he leans close, careful not to let his vaguely disapproving demeanour slip. “Save me some?” he asks Kara, who winks.

Not subtly. 

//

It’s late—almost eleven at night—when Kara shows up at Lena’s office. 

Lena doesn’t notice her at first. She's deeply absorbed in her work, lips moving silently as she scrawls something on her tablet. It’s only when Kara taps lightly at the door that Lena sees her, jumps up from her couch and crosses the room quickly. 

It’s cold. Kara vaguely knows that but it’s more obvious when she sees Lena clutching a blanket around her shoulders. And the floor is obviously cold on her bare feet but she barely even makes a face when she moves from the carpet to the tiles. Her fingers come out from under the blanket, fumble a little with the lock, but finally she tugs the door open for Kara.

“This is a surprise,” she says, voice low. 

“Good or bad?”

“Good,” Lena tells her warmly, and she rests a hand for a moment on Kara’s arm, squeezes. “Always good.”

Kara is struck dumb for a moment—the light from outside, city lights and a half moon, washes pale over Lena’s face and with her standing there so still, and quiet, Kara would think she is staring at a marble statue save for the steady thump of her heart. Lena’s smile grows a little and Kara’s eyes flick down to it. “Good,” she murmurs. “I’m glad.”

They stand there for a minute longer and then Lena shivers. She steps away from Kara, back to the carpet and digs her toes into it. 

“What brings you here so late?” she asks, tidying her couch and table. She flips the cover of her tablet closed, collects the many pens she’s scattered over the area. “And,” she pauses, looks back over her shoulder. Confusingly, her eyes dip to Kara’s chin and she smiles again. “Why do you look like you’ve been fighting the Doughboy?”

“Huh?”

“You have a little,” Lena points and Kara moves the box she’s holding to one hand, uses the back of her other wrist to wipe at her chin. She groans when she sees the icing.

“Did I get it?”

“Not at all. There’s some on your shoulder too.” Lena laughs when Kara huffs, points her into her bathroom. She comes back clean-faced and Lena says nothing about the icing on her collar. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“Sorry it's late. I flew my mom some, um, well first I guess I should tell you that I brought you something,” Kara stops her fumbling explanation, lifts the box up to show her. “You’ve been busy,”

“I _am_ sorry about cancelling breakfast,” Lena apologises again, looking a little tight around the eyes.

Kara makes a small sound, reaches out to take Lena by the wrist. She tugs her down onto the couch, slides up close and rests her hand on her knee. “No, no, this isn’t a guilt present. It’s just a present,” she assures her and she hands the box over. “I just wanted to do something nice because you’ve been working so hard. And sounded,” she pulls a face, making Lena laugh. “Stressed.”

“That’s a nice word for it.” Lena lays her hands on top of the box. She looks from it to Kara and shakes her head. “Thank you, Kara. This is…this is very nice of you.”

“You haven’t even opened it yet!”

Kara tries not to fidget but Lena takes _forever_ to open it—she slips the ribbon off slowly, taking a moment to admire the perfect curl (thank you Winn) and peeks at the card that just says _Lena_ in loopy writing. Finally, she pulls the lid up and off and when she looks inside, she starts to laugh. 

“Cookies. What a surprise!”

“Alex and I baked them. And Winn, you know Winn. And _Lucy_ ,” Kara says teasingly. Lena shakes her head, nudges her knee against Kara’s. “They’re in little packets—the guns were supposed to be L’s but Alex got to them when I was, um, called away?” She points to her chest and Lena nods that she understands. “She said you were very cool when you saved her so, guns. I wanted L’s because your name is Lena but _whatever_.” Kara scowls down at one of the guns but laughs when Lena crunches into one.

“Oh my god.”

“What? Are they terrible?”

“ _No_.” Lena brings a hand up to her mouth, groans. “They’re really, _really_ good.” She pushes the box toward Kara, who shakes her head no.

“They’re yours,” she tells her, and Lena looks touched. Then thoughtful.

She narrows her eyes. “How many did you two eat?”

Kara hesitates. “I don’t know what you mean.” Lena tilts her head, smirking. “Okay,” Kara crumbles instantly, “a _lot_. But I picked out all the best ones for you. I did the stars.” Lena plucks a star cookie out and she holds it up, lets Kara take a photo of her. “Anyway, I should go.” Kara stands, brushes her hands down her sweater. She grimaces when it puffs up a plume of flour and sneaks a look at Lena, who packs up the box of cookies and pretends she didn’t see it. “Do you want a lift to your place?”

“No, that’s alright. You’re not exactly dressed for Supergirl acts.”

“I guess.” 

Kara hesitates before reaching forward, pulling Lena into a hug. After a moment, Lena’s hands come up to press against her back and they hold there for a moment. One of Kara’s hands slips down Lena’s back in a comforting line, thumb rubbing for a moment.

She pulls away very slowly. 

“Thank you,” Lena says again. Her breath smells of sugar and Kara’s hands slip down her arms instead of pulling away completely. “For the gift. I know I haven’t been…available,”

“You’ve been busy, Lena,” Kara argues, too soft to be truly annoyed. “It really was just to, to make you happy. Something fun.”

Lena glances away but after a moment she nods. “I should be done with this project in about a week. I’ll have more time after that.” 

Kara starts to just nod, but then she realises that no matter how Lena is wording it, it’s an offer. She feels something flutter in her stomach, warm and insistent, and she pulls Lena in for another hug. This time, Lena leans more into the hug and they stand there for some time before Kara pulls—reluctantly—away. 

At the last moment, she turns her head and grazes her lips over Lena’s cheek. Kara hears Lena’s breath hitch but she doesn’t say anything and Kara, uncertain where the urge had come from or where her confidence has fled to now, just smiles at her, steps out onto the balcony, and flies away. 

**Author's Note:**

> unicyclehippo on tumblr as well


End file.
